THE INSTANT BESTSELLERSUNDAY TIMES
A BOOK OF THE YEARTIMES
Winner of the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023
âEpic, moving and importantâ ROBERT HARRIS
'A modern classicâOBSERVER
âAn unforgettable epic of a bookâDAILY MAIL
From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his fatherâs devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War.
Danielâs mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded the Netherlands. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed and sent to starve in Bergen-Belsen.
Danielâs father Ludwik was born in LwĂłw, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, Ludwikâs father was arrested and sentenced to hard labour in the Gulag. Meanwhile, deported to Siberia and working as a slave labourer on a collective farm, Ludwik survived the freezing winters in a tiny house he built from cow dung.
is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about Finkelsteinâs parentsâ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the twentieth century. It is a story of persecution; survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through.Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad
âDanny Finkelstein has written an elegant, moving account of the history of one family, and in doing so shines light on the history of the 20th century. If you want to understand Hitler and Stalin, read this book about people whose lives were upended by both of themâ ANNE APPLEBAUM, author of , winner of the Pulitzer PrizeGulag: A History