Randomly Reading: 2014 Sydney Taylor Award

Today, I am so happy to welcome Neal Bascomb to Randomly Reading. Neal and his book The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi have been named the winner of the 2014 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Teen Readers by the Association of Jewish Libraries. The Sydney Taylor Book Awards are given annually to those outstanding works that authentically portray the Jewish experience.

Welcome and congratulations, Neal, on being given this award for writing such a fascinating account of the events leading up to capture of Adolf Eichmann.

First, I was wondering if you would share some personal history about yourself with us?

Well, I was born in Denver, though I didn't live there long enough to learn to ski. I was actually raised in St. Louis, where I spent a lot of time at the ice skating rink. I loved reading and writing from an early age, and in 10th grade, a teacher inspired me to believe that I could make a career for myself as a writer (I just love those teacher who inspire). I went to college at Miami University in Ohio, and later, I was a journalist in Europe (London, Dublin, Paris) and later, I lived in New York as a book editor. I finally begann writing full time in 2001. Now, I live in Philadelphia with my wife, two daughters and a Portugese Water Dog named Moses.

After a career in journalism, what made you decide to begin writing books?

For a long time, I wrote short-form journalism, mostly for magazines. I loved the idea of committing to longer projects that I could spend months, even years researching, and really delving into my subject. Thus, books!

Have you always been interested in history and biographies? What motivated you to research and write about history?

I love stories. Period. They don't have to be historical or present day, just a great story, with rich characters - and it doesn't hurt if there's a lot of material to work from to really paint a full picture of the events as they unfolded.

You originally published the story of Eichmann's capture as an adult work entitled Hunting

Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notoriaous Nazi. What was the impulse or reason for you to undertake writing The Nazi Hunters for young adult readers? And did you find it a difficult process?

The whole purpose of the operation to capture Eichmann was for education, specifically Ben Gurion, the leader of Israel, wanted the Nazi war criminal brought to trial so that the world would be reminded of the crimes inflicted on the Jewish population during the Holocaust. That said, I was dim to the idea of turning my adult book on the subject in a young adult project until I received a call from a wonderful editor at Scholastic named Cheryl Klein. She saw the opportunity - and all at once, I did as well. And so, I sank myself headlong into the process.

Since young adult readers are beginning to have to do serious research papers, could you tell us what resources (i.e. museums, libraries, relatives) did you find most useful when researching this book?

I found all of these to be useful - everything. I'm like a Hoover of information. I gather as many resources across as spectrums as possible. Sometimes, I start with the Internet, even Wikipedia. They should never be your sole source of information, but it's a great launching pad for other sources, especially books, and then you look at their lists, and just keep going deeper and deeper into the topic. I love primary material, original interviews or archival material that has not been seen through the lens of other historians or authors.

I know from personal experience that reading and writing about anything related to the Holocaust can be a very emotional experience. But I was wondering how researching and writing this book about such a represhensible person affected your life?

This was a very difficult book to research and write, particularly when handling what Eichmann did over the course of the war. Writing about his victims often left me with nightmares, but in a way, I was glad that it affected me so much, as I hope that I put that same feeling of horror and sadness into the pages related to his crimes.

Perhaps you could tell us what you find to be the most challenging aspects of your work as well as the most rewarding.

I once thought that the life of an author was glamourous (this was before I actuallly became one). I thought that I would spend my days in cafes and work when I wanted, that I would vacation in Europe during the summer and never have a care in the world. Well, that was a fantasy. Writing, being an author, is work, everyday at your desk or coffee shop, whichever you prefer, bit it is work that takes committment, focus, and persistence. That all said, I love it. I love every part of it, both researching, hours spent in libraries or in archieves or interviewing people And I love the writing, tough as the blank page is sometimes.

Could you tell us about any of your upcoming projects?

My next YA book from Scholastic is called SABOTAGE, and it's about Norwegian and British commandos who stopped the Nazis from getting the atomic bomb. It's very much a "spies on skis" kind of tale, but one layered with science and history and the machinations of war. I'm super excited about it.

Thank you, Neal, for visiting Randomly Reading and for the insight you have given us into your life, your work and your writing process. I know I will be looking forward to reading SABOTAGE when it is published. Once again, congratulations on winning the 2014 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Teen Readers. I wish you all the best in the future.

Below is the schedule for the 2014 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour. Please follow the links to visit the hosting blogs on or after their tour dates, and be sure to leave them plenty of comments!

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2014

Renee Londner, author of Stones for Grandpa
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
At The Write Stuff

Martha Aviles, illustrator of Stones for Grandpa
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
At Practically Paradise

Aline Sax, author, Caryl Strzelecki, illustrator, and Laura Watkinson, translator of The War Within These Walls
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
At The 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, Research

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2014

Laurel Snyder, author of The Longest Night
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
At Geo Librarian

Catia Chen, illustrator of The Longest Night
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
At Holy Sparks

Robyn Bavati, author of Dancing in the Dark
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
At Bildungsroman

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2014

Neal Bascomb, author of The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
At Randomly Reading

Carol Matas, author of Dear Canada: Pieces of the Past: The Holocaust Diary of Rose Rabinowitz
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Older Readers Category
At Pen and Prose

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Cosei Kawa, illustrator of Rifka Takes a Bow
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
At Jewish Books for Children

Elisabeth Leyson, contributor to The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible...on Schindler’s List
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Older Readers Category
At The Interlace Place

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2014

Patricia Polacco, author and illustrator of The Blessing Cup
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Older Readers Category
At Ann Koffsky's Blog

Blog Tour Wrap-Up with All Authors and Illustrators
At The Whole Megillah

Congratulations to Neal Bascomb, first for winning the 2014 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults and, second for winning 2014 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Teen Readers.

I will be interviewing Neal on Tuesday as part of the 2014 Sydney Taylor Book Blog Tour, which begins today. You can click on the link to see the complete schedule.

I first heard about The Nazi Hunters at the 2013 Book Bloggers' Conference, when Arthur A. Levine editor Cheryl Klein spoke about it at the YA Editor Insight panel and later, I received an ARC of the book. I read it over the summer at the beach and found it fascinating. I thought before I post my interview with Neal, I would reproduce my review that I originally posted on September 13, 2013 on my other blog, The Children's War.

The Nazi Hunters was a book that was promoted at BEA this year, so naturally I was very curious to read this account of the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960. The author, Neal Bascomb, had already written a book about the group of Holocaust survivors who pulled off Eichmann's capture for adults called Hunting Eichmann and now he has revised it for younger readers.

Eichmann was the very high ranking Nazi who had been responsible first for the emigration of Jews to Palestine and later for implementing the Final Solution beginning in 1942 to meet Hitler's goal of making Europe "Jew free." But in April 1945, as the Allies attacked Berlin and with the deaths of 6 million Jews on his hands, it was time for Eichmann to get out of Europe. For 16 years, no one heard anything about him. It was as if he simply disappeared off the face of the earth.

Amazingly, despite efforts to find Eichmann and bring him to justice, he was never found until a teenage girl named Sylvia Hermann, living in Buenos Aires, South America in 1956, started dating a young man named Nick Eichmann. Invited to dinner at the Hermann home, Nick, like his father, was also anti-Semitic and couldn't resist commenting at table that his father had been a high ranking Nazi officer and it would have been better if Germany had finished what it started as respects the Jews in Europe.

It seems amazing that the capture of such a notorious criminal began with two young people dating for a brief time, but eventually a group of survivors of Eichmann's concentration camps came together based on this and additional information. But it didn't happen immediately. In fact, interest in what the Hermann's reported to Israeli intelligence died and it wasn't until a few years later that Eichmann was again identified and a group of highly trained Mossad spies and Holocaust survivors set the plan to capture him in motion.

The Nazi Hunters is a hard book to put down, but it is also a fast read, in part because it is so well researched and so excellently written. It is as exciting and tense as any spy thriller you might read with one difference - it all really happened.

Lest you forget that what you are reading is nonfiction, there is also an abundance of photographs of the people, the places involved and the documents used, some forged, to help the reader formulate a well rounded picture of the whole very clandestine operation from start to finish. And because most of the names will not be familiar to readers today, and because there were so many of them, there is also an in-depth list of all the people who participated on some level or other in the plan to capture Eichmann. Bascomb has really done such a good job of presenting the whole story factually and appropriately for young readers, without simply dumbing down his original adult work, and he includes plenty of back matter for further information and/or inquiry.

I have read Hannah Arendt's account of Eichmann's trial in Israel, Eichmann in Jerusalem, a number of times, but have never read an account of how he got there. Bascomb does cover the trial briefly, but his main focus is really the capture of Eichmann. And I can say unequivocally, that from the beginning to the end, Bascomb will keep you on the edge of your seat as Eichmann's fate unfolds. The Nazi Hunters is a book I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in the Holocaust and its perpetrators.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was an ARC from BEA