In 1960, six agents from Israel's Mossad intelligence operations tracked down and captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who had orchestrated the deaths of millions of Jews. This adaptation of Hunting Eichmann, the author's book for adults, conveys the story in context with intriguing details and well-chosen quotations from primary sources. Eichmann was living in Argentina, a country not likely to facilitate the capture, so the agents worked secretly. After verifying the identity of Eichmann, who was working in a factory, the Mossad agents carefully put their plan into action. Each of the agents on the team had a strength--languages, falsifying documents, building secret compartments. Most of them had relatives killed in the Holocaust, which gave the mission an unusual level of meaning, knowing they'd meet one of the men responsible for their loss. Without fictionalizing, this reads like a spy novel but one with a deep emotional impact.
Reading Std #3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. The author does a good job of building suspense throughout the story, even for the reader who knows at the beginning what will happen to Eichmann. Have students analyze the text to see how the author creates tension in the reader through the pacing. How does he use structure and language to speed up and slow down the pace? How does this compare to techniques used to create suspense in fiction?
