THE NAZI SEANCE

This is the bizarre (and true) story of Erik Hanussen, a Jew who was Hitler's favorite clairvoyant/magician, who did horoscopes and held séances for the Fuhrer (and other top Nazis) and taught Adolf gestures that helped him mesmerize audiences at mass rallies. Hanussen ranked among the top clairvoyants in Europe and toured the US in the 1920s.

He was a smash from coast-to-coast. Hanussen's brilliant, perverted deceit stunned and marveled and, for a while, it worked: he drove a red Bugatti, a lime-green Cadillac, a LaSalle; owned a yacht; acquired a small fortune; invented a hormonal cream that 'increased male virility and female desire ' But in the end, even Hanussen's powers failed. An optimist and a naïf, maybe; a scoundrel, definitely Hanussen never comprehended the full consequences of allying himself with the nether forces poised to consume the continent. Arthur Magida is the author of several books, including THE RABBI AND THE HIT MAN: A True Tale of Murder, Passion, and Shattered Faith (HarperCollins, 2003), PROPHET OF RAGE: A Life of Louis Farrakhan and his Nation (Basic Books, 1996), and OPENING THE DOORS OF WONDER: Reflections on Religious Rites of Passage (University of California Press, 1996). He is writer-in-residence at the University of Baltimore, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a consultant for a two-hour PBS documentary on forgiveness. He has been a columnist for Beliefnet.com; a contributing correspondent to PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly;" a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; editorial director of Jewish Lights Publishing; senior editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times; environmental reporter for National Journal; writer/editor for Ralph Nader; and director of publications for an energy conservation project sponsored by the National Parks Service. His op-eds have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Hartford Courant, The Houston Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and he has free-lanced for TomPaine.com, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Report, Tikkun, plus The New York Times, Boston Globe, Geo, Islands and Historic Preservation magazines. He has appeared on NBC's "Dateline," the "CBS Early Show," PBS's "The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour," ABC's "World News Tonight," C-Span's "Booknotes," NPR's "Morning Edition" and "On the Media," Court TV's "Catherine Crier Live," several A&E documentaries and numerous local and regional radio and TV shows. He has received 16 Simon Rockower Awards from the American Jewish Press Association; five A.D. Emmart Awards for writing on the humanities; two Smolar Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism; two National Mass Media Certificates of Recognition from the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The Fund for Investigative Journalism and The Dick Goldensohn Fund have supported his work.