Author Description

In September 1992 Yaron Svoray, an Israeli journalist, was traveling in Germany when he met a young man, a skinhead, who, taking Svoray to be a sympathetic American and not realizing he was Jewish, introduced him to the semisecret world of German neo-Nazism. In a short time, Svoray contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and, with the center's backing, returned to Germany under the name of "Ron Furey," the American representative of a fictitious right-wing organization. So began a remarkable and shocking series of encounters between Svoray and members of Germany's neo-Nazi underground. Putting himself at great personal risk and constantly fearing that his identity would be discovered, Svoray met - and documented with hidden cameras and recording devices - a terrifying array of believers both young and old whose reach, he was shocked to find out, extends throughout Germany and beyond. He came across brutal young skinheads; paramilitary training camps that have sent neo-Nazi fighters to support Croatian soldiers in the former Yugoslavia; a network of committed neo-Nazis who are using their money and connections to establish political organizations; and politicians of the far right who cloak their connections to the movement in nationalist rhetoric. In Hitler's Shadow is a sobering report on the real threat that is posed by Germany's neo-Nazi movement, and a startling portrayal of the dangerous personalities behind it, told by a man of immense courage who has penetrated its heart of darkness.