About this item
Baron Otto von Wchter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon Wiesenthal, on the run for three years, from 1945 to 1948 . . . Philippe Sands pieces together, in riveting detail, Wchter's extraordinary, shocking story. Given full access to the Wchter family archives--journals, diaries, tapes, and more--and with the assistance of the Wchters' son Horst, who believes his father to have been a "good man," Sands writes of Wchter's rise through the Nazi high command, his "blissful" marriage and family life as their world was brought to ruin, and his four-year flight to escape justice--to the Tirol, to Rome, and the Vatican; given a new identity, on his way to a new life via "the Ratline" to Pern's Argentina, the escape route taken by Eichmann, Mengele, and thousands of other Nazis.
About the Author
Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at University College London and a practicing barrister at Matrix Chambers. He has been involved in many important cases, including Pinochet, Congo, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Guantanamo and the Yazadis. His books include and . He is a frequent contributor to the and , makes regular appearances on radio and television, and serves on the boards of English PEN and the Hay Festival.
