Crash of the Heavens: the untold story of the only military mission to rescue Europe's Jews during World War II

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How a crack team of parachutists - including several heroic young women - launched one of the most daring rescue missions of World War II. In the decades before the Second World War, thousands of young Jewish men and women left the antisemitism of Europe for British-controlled Palestine. By 1942, they then began receiving reports of unimaginable horrors- of the liquidation of the ghettos, of industrialised killing centres in Poland, of the plan to exterminate all of Europe's Jews. The Yishuv - the Jewish community in British Palestine - needed to act. Striking a deal with British Intelligence in 1943, they trained a cadre of volunteer Jewish emigres to parachute behind enemy lines on a dual mission- assisting thousands of downed Allied airmen to escape and to rescue as many Jewish citizens as possible from the death camps. At the centre of this story is the extraordinary Hannah Senesh, a legendary poet-soldier, and her courageous female colleagues, who, armed with only their intelligence and humanity, underwent training as commandos, radio operators and parachutists - then, in early 1944, courageously jumped behind enemy lines. Captured in her native Hungary, Senesh refused to give up any information even while suffering months of gruesome torture. Thrilling and inspiring, Crash of the Heavens is one of the great untold stories of the Second World War. Praise for No Surrender- 'A fascinating war story ... a you-are-there portrait of the horrors of war and the incredible effect one selfless person can have on hundreds.' -Kirkus Reviews Praise for No Surrender- 'There's perhaps no greater untold story to come out of World War II. It's a heck of a father-son story, but it's also a tale of the power of one man to do something selfless that forever changes a life.' -Newsweek Praise for The Last Boss of Brighton- 'Douglas Century fuses cultural history and popular entertainment to create the dramatic effect of a novel. The Last Boss of Brighton is an engrossing true story, one of those mob epics that hits all the expected notes - murder and betrayal, swaggering power and outlandish success, featuring, at its core, a complex antihero whose life story seems stranger than fiction. More than a chronicle of a notorious crime boss, it delves deep into the systemic corruption and dysfunction of the Soviet Union that created, honed, and defined Russian organised crime in America. What a relentless, captivating read.' -Naveed Jamali, author of How to Catch a Russian Spy