Citizen 865 is a powerful, important book by Debbie Cenziper, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. It could earn her a second prize. It is serious journalism at its best. Citizen 865 reads like a fast-paced mystery novel. But it is not fiction. It is all true ... Cenziper brilliantly retells the story of how lawyers and historians unraveled [Reimer's] lies, with the help of some survivors of Reimer’s atrocities ... The story of Feliks and Lucyna puts a human face to the horrors of the Holocaust, even as we stand in awe of their strength, wits, and good luck in surviving ... This powerful book reminds us that hateful jargon and slogans can lead to murder and genocide. But it is also a hopeful book about the power of knowing history and the rule of law.
Cenziper provides stunning insights into these Nazi hunters’ skill, accomplishments, and dedication. She retraces their steps, giving us two layers of investigation. We learn how these professionals went about their work, interpreted the law, and prevailed in their cases. We also learn quite a bit about how Cenziper did her own investigation of the investigators, making the case for our appreciation of their efforts ... Passionate, provocative, and artfully constructed, this fully engaging work of deeply humanized scholarship is a fine addition to the literature of the Holocaust and its aftermath. It could very well bring Debbie Cenziper her second Pulitzer.
Cenziper brought her investigative skills to bear on the challenge of retrieving the hard facts, but she also possesses the gift of a storyteller. For that reason, Citizen 865 is a work of nonfiction that reads like a thriller ... a highly significant work of investigation that is eye-opening and heartbreaking. She compels us to confront the crimes of the Trawniki men in a way that burns itself into both memory and history.
With much human interest, Cenziper draws out all the implications for principles of justice for victims and perpetrators of unspeakable crimes. Includes a map and bibliographic notes.
...Cenziper provid[es] fascinating insight into the personalities, motivations, and procedures of the OSI prosecutors who successfully exposed (after some missteps) men such as John Demjanjuk and Reimer. The accounts of Lucyna and Felix, whose families were murdered by alumni of the Trawniki training camp, are told with a great deal of empathy, but unfortunately, these two main threads never manage to meet in the book.
Skillfully written and reported, it will seem familiar in parts to readers of Nagorski or other accounts of the work of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) ... Cenziper burrows, perhaps more than necessary, into the private lives of these historians. Her narrative is more rewarding when she recounts the travails of Feliks Wojcik and Lucyna Stryjewska, Jewish teenagers who fell in love in the Lublin ghetto and survived through a series of harrowing escapes and lucky breaks ... Cenziper’s account moves cinematically around in time and place, a narrative sleight of hand that mostly works.
...[a] gripping narrative ... Cenziper sketches OSI investigators in broad yet deft strokes, interweaving their stories with the account of a Jewish couple who escaped Lublin. Readers of true crime and Holocaust history will be swept up by this brisk, thrilling account.
As the author recounts the slaughtering of Jews, Poles in the Resistance, Roma people, and Soviet prisoners of war, the descriptions are sometimes sickeningly graphic; some readers might choose to skip over such details. Some of the accounts come from Feliks Wójcik and Lucyna Stryjewska, two Jews who managed to escape death, marry, settle in the U.S., and start a family. The investigative paths followed by Peter Black and Elizabeth 'Barry' White, two Justice Department sleuths, are especially gripping. A useful addition to the literature about Nazi hunters, a body of work that continues to grow.
