Odessa – hiding Nazi war criminals
ODESSA, (German Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, “Organization of Former SS Members”) is believed to have been an international Nazi network set up toward the end of World War II by a group of SS officers in order to avoid their capture and prosecution for war crimes. A fictional account of the organization was manifest in Frederick Forsyth's 1972 best-seller thriller The Odessa File. Forsyth's ODESSA smuggled war criminals to Latin America. However, several authoritative books by professionals involved in the U.S. War Crimes Commission (including T.H. Tetens and Joseph Wechsberg) have verified the organization's existence and given details of its operations. Wechsberg studied Simon Wiesenthal's memoirs on ODESSA and verified them with his own experiences in the book The Murderers Among Us. The purpose of ODESSA