The Odessa File

- Hannah, would you mind? - Yes.

What I am going to tell you is, of course, top secret.

The Egyptians have rockets based at Helwan.

The targets are Accra, 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 would 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 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 br...

Events that can change history

sometimes hang on tiny chances.

If I hadn't pulled to the kerb that night

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.

Karl!

- 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?

Ja.

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.

Ja.

Well, 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.

Oh, 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 know, 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.

Ja . Other people's children.

Do you have some reason for asking me to this lunch? Because...

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 be giving it to you, so keep it to yourself, hmm?

I always do, Karl.

Thanks.

"My name is Salomon Tauber.

"I have stayed alive this long

"only because there was one more thing I wished to do.

"The friends I have known,

"the sufferers and the 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."

Raus hier!

Raus! Schnell, schnell! Raus hier!

"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, and 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."

Was ist denn los, man, Weichheitsercheinungen?

Er hat doch nichts mitgebracht.

Ich habe mit ihm gesprochen. Er ist doch erst 16.

Nehmen sie sich zusammen, man.

Nummer eins! Feuer!

Nummer zwei! Feuer!

Nummer drei! Feuer!

Nummer vier!

Los, fertig machen!

"Sometimes Roschmann amused himself

"by kicking those about to die as they huddled together naked,

"stripped of dignity and of all hope.

"He enjoyed 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 as if there was a holiday party

"eating and drinking inside.

"Some prisoner musicians were made to play,

"to add to the festivities."

Danke. Sie bleiben hier.

Salomon!

- Überlassen sie das uns. - Aber meine Frau...

Salomon! Komm doch!