"His memoir, previously published in Hebrew, Hungarian, and Italian, is an incredible account of this daring mission by its only survivor. Without a doubt, a vivid chronicle of bravery and compassion."- Booklist

"More than a half a century has elapsed since [Yoel Palgi's] paratrooper operations in occupied Europe. The world has appreciably changed since....Yet there are events, fragments of history, whose significance time and place do not alter. It seems that a special place in history is reserved for the story of this remarkable group of courageous Jews that did the impossible. It is vital that [this] story be told."-Shimon Peres, Nobel Prize winner, former Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel

"Palgi describes in riveting human terms an excruciatingly painful piece of Israeli and world history, and does so with extraordinary psychological and ethical insight."-Robert J. Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

"This gripping account of a desperate rescue mission goes beyond conveying the horror of the Holocaust and the brutality of the Nazis. The rescuers worked within an ambiguity where every alliance was questionable and noble decisions could prove fatal. This is the illuminating story of a thoughtful man, driven by history to courageous improvisation and ethical struggle, acting and remembering in spite of uncertainty."-Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Full Circles, Overlapping Lives

"Yoel Palgi's story is one of heroism, inner conflict and questioning. His readiness to go behind the Nazi lines to rescue the Jews of Hungary reflected his extraordinary courage. He paints a vivid picture of the danger of his effort both behind enemy lines and the emotional scars that were left after the war. This is a must read for any student of the Holocaust."- Dennis Ross, Director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

In the spring of 1944, a group of thirty-two young Palestinian Jews parachuted into Nazi-held Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Their goal was to encourage Jewish resistance where possible and to organize rescue schemes thwarting deportations to the death camps. Linking up in Yugoslavia and impelled by the hope that the Jews trapped in Hungary were still capable of fighting back, some of the volunteers set out for Budapest. Tragically, they were betrayed by their local guides, who turned out to be double agents also working for the Hungarian Fascists. The volunteers reached Budapest where the young woman volunteer, Hannah Szenes, was executed and another deported to a death camp.

Into the Inferno is the remarkable first-hand account of this mission by the only member of the group who miraculously survived from among those who penetrated into Hungary. He endured imprisonment and torture both by the Gestapo and the Hungarian Fascists, escaped from a deportation train, and joined the Zionist youth rescue underground in Budapest. This book, however, is more than a gripping true-adventure story. It tells of people who willingly sacrificed themselves for a cause. Palgi writes movingly of the bonds of comradeship, of the anguish of losing companions-in-arms, and of the inevitably tragic attempt to turn back the tide of the Holocaust. These young freedom fighters, in the words of Israeli professor Yehuda Sluski, became "a link in the chain of Jewish heroism of all generations."

Yoel Palgi was born in Transylvania in 1918, and then immigrated to Palestine in 1939. After the World War II rescue mission, he established and commanded the country's first paratrooper unit during Israel's War of Independence. He pioneered civil aviation and headed El Al's airlift of 200,000 Jewish immigrants from Muslim countries to Israel. He later served as ambassador to Tanzania. He died in 1978 and was buried in the Military Cemetery for Heroes in Jerusalem along with Hannah Szenes and other fallen members of the larger mission.