The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. is a 1981 literary and philosophical novella by George Steiner , in which Jewish Nazi hunters find a fictional Adolf Hitler ( A.H. ) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War II . The book generated considerable controversy after its publication because in it , Steiner , who is Jewish , allows Hitler to defend himself when he is put on trial in the jungle by his captors . There Hitler maintains that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust and that he is the " benefactor of the Jews " .