A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin

January 1, 2014
Straightforward account of the historical curiosity of a sadistic serial killer preying on women in the heart of Nazi Germany. Selby (The Axmann Conspiracy: The Nazi Plan for a Fourth Reich and How the U.S. Army Defeated It, 2012, etc.) notes that for Paul Ogorzow, an average-seeming railroad worker, "night had acquired new meaning in wartime Berlin"; with it, the entire city was his hunting ground. The historical record suggests Ogorzow was a fiend akin to Ted Bundy, a seemingly well-adjusted man (Ogorzow was married with children) secretly compelled to murder eight random women and assault others: "Giving up his attacks was not a consideration...[so] he focused on what he could do to become a better criminal." After some close calls, Ogorzow realized he could freely pursue women traveling on the blacked-out "S-Bahn" commuter line. Selby shifts perspectives between Ogorzow's grisly misdeeds--which culminated in his flinging his still-living victims from the speeding train--and the "Kripo" (criminal police) detectives, determined to catch him yet kept in check by Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, who "wanted to project an image of Nazi Germany...as a place free from such problems as the predations of a serial killer." Old-fashioned detective work eventually snared the killer; neither Ogorzow's belated attempts to blame "a Jewish doctor" for mistreating his gonorrhea nor his request for leniency as a Nazi "Brownshirt" delayed his appointment with the guillotine. Selby creates verisimilitude by focusing on numerous details of daily life in the Third Reich, demonstrating how everything from rail travel to law enforcement was bent to the will of Hitler's henchmen. Yet, he rarely exploits the obvious historical irony of Ogorzow's small-scale evil against the grander backdrop of Berliners' complicity in conquest and genocide, only noting that some of his pursuers went on to participate in war crimes. The workmanlike telling of Ogorzow's pursuit and eventual capture lacks a certain impact, though fans of serial-killer narratives will surely be engaged.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2014

In Berlin during World War II, nightly blackouts were necessary owing to Allied bombing raids. However, this total darkness protected criminals as well as citizens. One of the most horrifying--and most successful--of these was Paul Ogorzow, a mild-mannered railroad employee who at night became a sexual predator, raping and often murdering female factory workers who were coming home in the dark. Though he initially attacked them close to their homes, a near capture caused him to rethink his strategy, and he started to terrorize women in the cars of the S-Bahn commuter trains, taking sexual satisfaction in brutalizing them and then throwing them off the train. Selby (The Axmann Conspiracy; Flawless) follows the police investigation, noting that the police overlooked the Aryan and Nazi Party man Ogorzow, expecting a Jew or other undesirable to be the culprit. Nonetheless, the notorious case inspired Joseph Goebbels to commission a series of crime novels to inspire faith in the German police. VERDICT Information dumps about German law slow the story down, but the inherently interesting case should appeal to those who enjoy reading World War II history as well as to true-crime fans.--Deirdre Bray, Middletown P.L., OH

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.