The Odessa File

Hannah, would you mind?

What I am going to tell you is,

of course, top secret.

The Egyptians have rockets

based at Helwan.

The targets are Acre, Haifa, Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

That would be the first strike.

The second strike would straddle

the whole country.

The rockets will have special warheads.

They will contain bubonic plague

and strontium 90.

If it succeeds, it will be the end of Israel.

All they are waiting for is completion

of a teleguidance system...

...without which

they can't target the rockets.

I have received this.

Scientists are working

on the teleguidance system...

...somewhere in Germany,

under the cover of a legitimate factory.

They're blameless because they don't know

they are working for the Odessa.

They have nearly completed the job.

David, we must find that factory, quick.

I'll fly back tonight.

This is the West German

Broadcasting Network.

We are interrupting our programme

to take you direct to the United States...

...for a further report

on the condition of the President.

This is Washington.

We have just received confirmation

that President Kennedy is dead.

President John F. Kennedy

died at the Parkland Hospital...

...following a shooting

at Dallas earlier today.

Mrs. Kennedy was at her husband's side...

...while surgeons administered

an emergency blood transfusion.

But it was not possible

to save the President's life.

We will be...

Events that can change history

sometimes hang on tiny chances.

If I hadn't pulled to the curb

I wouldn't have caught the traffic light...

...nor seen the ambulance...

...never have heard of Salomon Tauber

or Eduard Roschmann.

Nor got involved with the agents of Israel...

...or with the sinister and deadly men

behind the Odessa.

That night I was just a reporter

with a nose for a possible story.

Press!

Sorry, you can't go in there.

- What's going on?

- Ask at the police station.

- Hello!

- Put it away. It's nothing.

What happened?

Suicide. An old man gassed himself.

It's not worth two lines.

Did you hear about Kennedy?

Yeah.

Just a second.

All right.

- What have you got there?

- Some of the old man's rubbish.

- Put it on my desk.

- Right.

People are dying

all over the world tonight...

...but all anyone will want to read about

tomorrow is Kennedy.

I'd better be going, Peter.

Keep out of trouble.

On board the plane taking

John Kennedy's body to Washington...

...the new President was sworn in.

In a voice shaking with emotion...

...a woman judge from Dallas

gave him the official oath to speak.

Mrs. Kennedy still wore

the bloodstained dress...

...in which she had held

her dying husband in her arms.

That's so terrible.

You know what you could get

for the photograph...

...of the man firing those shots?

With syndication rights,

maybe two million marks.

What a thing to say at this moment.

You're a very scary person.

What did I say?

You don't know what you said?

You're a parasite!

You live off other people's troubles.

It's the old job conversation once again.

Is that what it is?

- Come on, Sigi.

- I'm tired. I've been working all night.

And what is it, your work?

Dancing around half-naked

in front of a lot of old men!

I earn more in a week

than you do in a month!

Anyway, they're not old.

Some of them

are much more attractive than you are.

I am sincerely happy for you.

I'm not sure anyone would pay you

to dance around half-naked.

You should have taken

that regular job at the Komet...

...then maybe I wouldn't have to work

at the club.

You want to turn me into a cabbage?

You are a cabbage.

I'm a freelance.

It's not regular work,

but when I make money...

...I can make a lot of money.

I like my work.

I'm conscientious and I'm ambitious.

But I'm a freelance,

and I'm not giving that up.

You know, Monika and I

are very fond of Sigi.

- I'm very fond of you and Monika.

- Don't you want children?

You're very good with children, Peter.

Other people's children.

Do you have some reason

for asking me to this lunch? Because...

...if we continue any further

with this marriage talk...

...it may be the end

of a wonderful friendship.

I wanted to give you this.

- What is it?

- Something to read.

It was lying beside the body

of that old man who gassed himself.

- What's so special?

- You'll see.

But it's police property.

I really shouldn't give it to you,

so keep it to yourself, huh?

I always do, Karl.

Thanks.

My name is Salomon Tauber.

I have lived this long only because

there was one more thing I wished to do.

The friends I have known, the sufferers

and victims of the camp, are long dead...

...and only the persecutors

are still around me.

I see their faces on the streets

in the daytime...

...and in the night

I see the face of my wife, Esther.

And I remember how she clung to me

on the train...

...as we pulled into the station at Riga.

We had been three days and three nights

in that cattle truck from Berlin...

...without food or water.

The dead, and there were many of them,

were crowded in among us.

It was there I first saw him.

Captain Eduard Roschmann,

the SS Commandant of the camp.

The "butcher."

Every day brought another trainload

of prisoners.

Roschmann had many of the women,

children and elderly...

...exterminated on arrival.

They were more valuable dead.

Their clothes, their hair,

their teeth were a cash asset.

But Esther and I survived

through that year.

I had been an architect before the war...

...and knew enough of carpentry

to get skilled work.

We laboured 12 hours a day

in the camp workshops...

...or else at the lumber mills

in the damp frozen woods near the coast.

Several times during the following winter,

I thought Esther would die.

The hunger, the cold,

the constant brutalities...

...seemed to have broken her spirit

and her will to live.

Yet, compared to some, we were fortunate.

Many of the prisoners

were given no food at all...

...until they died of starvation.

Roschmann had a hobby.

He liked to destroy human beings.

First their soul, then their body.

Sometimes Roschmann amused himself...

...by kicking those about to die

as they huddled together naked...

...stripped of dignity and of all hope.

He liked watching the dogs feed on them

while they were still breathing.

We had seen a strange van...

...grey coloured,

waiting near the gates of the camp.

It had false windows painted on it.

There were drawings

of people laughing and picnicking.

To the workers in the fields

outside the camp...

...when the van went by...

...it must have looked like there was

a holiday party...

...eating and drinking inside.

Some prisoner musicians

were made to play...

...to add to the festivities.

But we soon found out

that the van had a very different purpose.

Roschmann had converted it

into a gas chamber.

The exhaust pipe

had been fed back into the van...

...so that everyone inside

was suffocated by the fumes.

The expression in Esther's eyes

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