100: They escaped Europe — then parachuted back in, with Matti Friedman

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In 1944, as the gears of the Holocaust turned toward Hungary, 32 young Jewish volunteers did the unthinkable: they parachuted into the genocide. They were a motley bunch, including a celebrated poet and a nearsighted 40-year-old pacifist. They were sent by the British to rescue downed pilots and by the Zionist leadership to save Jews. They stood almost no chance of success, and by every military metric, they failed. They organized no uprisings; they liberated no camps. Yet, as Matti Friedman reveals in his riveting new book Out of the Sky , their mission was never really about military tactics. It was about story-telling. They set out to show that even in the 20th century's deepest, darkest…