My recent book launch in person brought many friends old and new for a celebration at Lia’s in Friendship Heights.

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My nominee for the scariest movie is  an 85-minute German TV movie, later released in American movie theaters. The Wannsee Conference draws its script from the minutes of the January 20 meeting called by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Nazi …

The Scariest Movie Read more »

A beautiful American lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Mildred Fish, married Arvid Harnack, a visiting Rockefeller Foundation fellow and returned with him to Germany in 1929. In 1942, she was tried as a member of the “Red Orchestra,” a …

The Red Orchestra Read more »

Many considerations affect the choice of characters’ names. Are they memorable? Do you have too many characters whose names begin with J? Is the name appropriate for the age and birthplace of a character. I tried to consider the first …

Finding names Read more »

Have you noticed that I never use the term “Nazi” in Thieves of Paris? I had been very careful where I used Nazi and where I used German in the first draft, since not all Germans were Nazis—and not all …

Nazi Shmatzi Read more »

One of my favorite characters in Thieves of Paris is Countess Irène Sampieri, mother of Madame Beatrice Camondo Reinach. Research on this lady began my interest in Nazi art theft. When Irène was six, her father, Count Louis Cahen D’Anvers, …

Countess Sampieri Read more »