Hitler | Stalin | Mum and Dad: A Sunday Times Bestselling Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR‘Epic | moving and important’ ROBERT HARRIS‘A modern classic’ OBSERVER‘An unforgettable epic of a book’ DAILY MAILFrom longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein | a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution | resistance and survival during the Second World War.Daniel’s 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.Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwów | the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939 | after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland | Ludwik’s 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.Hitler | Stalin | Mum and Dad is a deeply moving | personal and at times horrifying memoir about Finkelstein’s parents’ 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.‘Danny 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 them’ ANNE APPLEBAUM | author of Gulag: A History | winner of the Pulitzer PrizeDaniel Finkelstein's book 'Hitler | Stalin | Mum and Dad' was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 26-06-2023.