http://www.last.fm/music/Daniel%2BKahn%2B%2526%2BThe%2BPainted%2BBird/_/Six%2BMillion%2BGermans%2B%252F%2BNakam#shoutbox

I very much enjoyed the review, though I would have appreciated some mention of Kovner’s testimony during the Eichmann trial. I hope Porat’s book covers it.

Prodigal Sons by Sheldon Greene

“An Israeli secret agent hunts Nazi war criminals in this rich psychological thriller. By day, he’s Horst Vogle, a mild-mannered curator and a Wehrmacht veteran with the shrapnel scars to prove it. By night, he’s Jan Goldberg, an undercover Israeli assassin and a Polish Jew who got those scars blowing up German transports with a partisan band during World War II and then battling Arabs with the Haganah. After a day spent poring over art catalogs, Horst/Jan heads out into a dark and still-dilapidated Munich , circa 1950, to shoot and garrote his targets, leaving behind photos of them in their SS uniforms to underscore the point. He considers these assignments a just payback for the murder of his family, but he’s starting to have misgivings. Fueling them is Horst’s relationship with Greta, a beautiful young pianist who reminds him of his sister. She introduces him to her friends at the Kultur Bund, a crypto-Nazi organization publicly dedicated to building the New Germany while it secretly uses stolen art and gold looted from Jews to fund terrorism. With his fair hair, Nordic looks and steadiness under pressure, they consider Horst such fine Aryan stock that they try to recruit him. Jan’s handler is eager for him to infiltrate the group, but the effort adds a new and fraught layer of duplicity to his already tangled double life. Greene (Burnt Umber, 2001, etc.) keeps the action flowing with gripping battle and heist scenes and taut hitman procedural, but he also makes readers care about his characters. Even the Bund-ers are three-dimensional people with hidden complexities. Horst/Jan may be a killer, but he’s never coldblooded—in his longing for a home in a Germany that he’s sworn to wreak vengeance upon, he’s a fascinating study of the rootlessness of the Holocaust survivor. A page-turner with emotional depth.” Kirkus Discoveries Reviews
“…This book is a thriller that will captivate all World War II fans as it is based in fact and is an engrossing play on the Nazis in post war Germany . …Mr. Greene is right up there with John LeCarre for must-read, edge of your chair excitement. This book has everything a dyed in the wool spy fan will like including anger, revenge, murder, art, intrigue, a million-dollar robbery and romance. .. It grabs you from the first to the last pages. I am on my way to the library to pick up Mr. Greene’s previous books.” Oct 10 2009 Mary Lignor, Book Pleasures
“…, you will rarely find a novel that is written as well as this one. It is one you know you will enjoy after reading only the first few chapters.… you will find yourself surprised when you reach the end. Sheldon has written an engrossing novel about an interesting time in central European post-war history.” Oct 10 2009 Marty Dodge in BC
“…it is a cracking read from cover to cover. Sheldon has two prior books under his belt Lost And Found and Burnt Umber. He has developed into an author with a great future, his writing style lures the reader into the tale like a moth to the light… I have nothing but praise for Prodigal Sons, it has been expertly crafted in every sense. The character development and story line are a work of art. It is not easy to paint an assassin as a hero, yet Sheldon Greene pulls it off with panache.” Simon Barrett in Blogger News Network Nov. 06, 2009
“You will connect with the two main characters immediately.. .The adventure, mystery, and romance, along with the dangers that they encounter, will keep you feverishly turning the pages of this Satisfying Novel!” Jill Page, Frugal Plus, October 26, 2009

It’s more than a thriller, a romance, a historical novel, a spy thriller, heist…it’s a novel about the human condition, life and our ability to endure….
. Horst may be a character born in the mind of Sheldon Greene, but he is a also a symbol of humanity and how we can prevail.” Carter Martina, C.C. Chronicles November 10, 2009
http://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-Sons-Sheldon-Greene/dp/143922627X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248499881&sr=8-1
You might also be interested in the following interview. http://cc-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/11/welcome-to-weekend-with-sheldon-greene.html

Just one caveat: there was no “Vilna Ghetto” there was no “tiny, impoverished, walled-in enclave.” Just as in Warszaw, Lodz etc., the invading Nazis CREATED ghettoes and forced the Jewish population into them. Tiny? There were 70.000 Jews in Vilna and 350.000 in Warszaw.

East European Jewish life in a “ghetto, a tiny, impoverished, walled-in enlave” is a figment of late 20th Century Jewish imagination.