THEY DARED RETURN An Epic Story of Jewish Refugees Who Escaped Nazi Germany, but Returned for Vengeance by Patrick O'Donnell Oct 12, 2009 Hardcover US $26.00 / CAN $32.95 ISBN: 9780306818004 ISBN-10: 0306818000 Published by Da Capo Press

April 1945, Gestapo Headquarters, Innsbruck, Austria

“Jude!” the tall one barked, glaring into the man’s swollen eyes.

“Ach Quatsch!” (Nonsense!), another Gestapo officer stated. It was inconceivable that a Jew would dare return to the heart of the Third Reich as an Allied agent.

In the dank room, the Gestapo officers slapped and punched the spy in the face. His cover wasn’t holding water, and so the tall one stripped him from head to toe. Despite the agent’s bullish strength, the SS men brutally manhandled him, shoving him to the floor.

Cuffing his hands in front of him and pulling his arms over his bent knees, they forced him into a constricting fetal position, then shoved the barrel of a long rifle into the tiny gap behind his knees and his cuffed hands.

With a man on each side of the rifle, they lifted his naked, rolled-up body and suspended the human ball between two tables, like a piece of meat on a skewer. Uncoiling a rawhide whip, the tall one put his full weight behind each swing, mercilessly thrashing the agent’s body like a side of beef.

“Wo ist der funker?” (Where is the radio operator?)

“Wo ist der funker?”

A crimson pool spread beneath the agent’s body. In spite of the torment, he refused to crack, reiterating that he was merely a foreign worker (like thousands employed in the Reich’s factories).

When the whipping didn’t work, the Gestapo men decided to water-board their prisoner. They brought out two pitchers of water, and tipping their captive’s face to the ceiling, they poured the cold liquid down his mouth and nose. The water splashed into his mouth, forced open by rough hands. He felt like he was drowning, while the liquid painfully dripped into his perforated eardrum. The Nazis were methodical. One man poured while the second refilled the other pitcher.

The torture assembly line kept running for six hours.

Suddenly, the door to the dank room swung open, revealing a tall man dressed in the full regalia of a high-ranking Nazi officer. His looming presence filled the room, throwing a shadow over the men in their work. Surprised, they turned and the session stopped—for the moment.