Vengeance

In 1972, 11 Israeli athletes were murdered at the Munich Olympics. This is the chilling account of how they were avenged.

First published in 1984, George Jonas’s #1 bestseller Vengeance has become a real-life espionage classic. The story of five ordinary young Israelis whose mission it was to hunt down and kill the terrorists responsible for the massacre of eleven athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Vengeance plunges the reader into an explosive world of terrorism and political murder.

This is an account of what happened when five idealistic volunteer agents were sent to track down and kill the central figures of the PLO's Munich operation, told from the point of view of "Avner," a member of the team chosen to avenge the monstrous crime, and the first Mossad agent to come out of "deep cover" to tell his story. His description of the mechanics, the horrors and the unrelenting suspense of this mission surpasses the wildest fabrications of today’s blockbuster movies and bestselling crime thrillers. As these men moved from country to country, changing identities and risking their lives, they soon became targets themselves—tracked, hunted and even killed.

A profoundly human story, Vengeance explores firsthand the revulsion and doubt that came to torment the Israeli agents, inexorably changing their view of the mission and ultimately how they felt about themselves. It is also a stark examination of the timeless concerns that continue to plague our consciousness today: the nature of good and evil, and the difference between right and wrong.

George Jonas was born in Hungary and immigrated to Canada in 1956, where he became a script editor, and later TV producer, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Since 1985 he has been a freelance journalist, writer and TV producer based in Toronto. He is the author of fourteen books, including By Persons Unknown (with Barbara Amiel), a bestseller and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe award for non-fiction. He is a contributor to many Canadian periodicals and newspapers, and currently writes a weekly column for the National Post.