Today: after his arrest, Daniel's grandfather is transported to a gulag on the edge of the Artic Circle. Survival, he knows, is virtually impossible... A really excellent account of Daniel’s family. Emanating from (what was) Poland and Germany his grandparents’ lives, suffering and incredible achievements are recounted here in wonderful detail. Most family biographies would be dull but this book is gripping and thought provoking as the author intended.

Finkelstein, a Times columnist and member of the House of Lords, isn’t trying to explain why these utopian ideologies arose. His preoccupation is on the who and how: “…how the great forces of history crashed down in a terrible wave on two happy families; how it tossed them and turned them, and finally returned what was left to dry land”.There are lots of things that jump out - obviously the fact that millions of people could have had stories like this told about them, but we’ll never know because millions of people were murdered by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. And the fact (which Finkelstein makes explicit) that although the Nazi crimes recounted in here are well-known, the Stalinist atrocities are a lot less so (I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know about the scale of the transports to gulags in Eastern Russia, and just how obsessed Stalin was with destroying Poland).

Grete were expecting palsetine exchange certificate so that she can save atleast Mirjam,Eva and Ruth,one can assume how worse situation would have been there.For any parents , seeing their children grow up is an emotional moment. There is a moment in that when Ruth is getting 16 years old and there is a very poignant conversation between mother Grete and Ruth. It is important to read this book to comprehend the humanity and the feelings of parents. I came to know more about the sympathiser’s life and their circumstances in which they have bengined towards the jews,whether it will be Lados group,Camille and Hugli's local people. An amazing story, well told. Probably the most interesting aspect is that it tells the stories of two sides of the Second World War: the Germans and the Russian, which, apart from the concentration camps, are not so well known nowadays. Personally, I’d always believed that the Dutch had been helpful to refugees and Jewish people, but it appears they weren’t necessary so. Perhaps Anne Frank’s story has persuaded me otherwise previously. Amazing to think that the author’s maternal family not only knew the Franks but met them again in Belsen. I certainly found the German part of the story more interesting than the Russian / Polish side, though the gulags sounded terrible. A powerful family memoir written and researched by a great writer. Tough to read in many places, only made easier in the knowledge that these people must have survived (when so many didn't) because their son/grandson, Daniel is here to tell the tale, all these years later.

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Daniel's father Ludwik was born in the Polish city of Lwow, now Lviv, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists. His grandfather Dolu was arrested and disappeared, while his 10-year-old father and grandmother were sent to Siberia, working as slave labourers on a collective farm. They somehow survived starvation and freezing winters, living in a house they built from cow dung, but always hoping to be reunited with Dolu. As a young boy, Finkelstein’s father survived incarceration during the Holocaust years with his indomitable mother after the family had become separated. Being read by Finkelstein himself, the deeply harrowing details of these years of torturous suffering and of his family’s persecution in the 1930s strengthens the impact of this indelible memoir. Such a brilliantly written book about how Hitler’s and Stalin’s appalling states ripped two families apart, and how they - somehow - managed not only to survive WWII but produce such a remarkable family at the end. 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. I listened to this on audio and unsurprisingly because of the theme found myself muttering aloud disbelief at parts of this story. Not just the horrors that the family endured but also the complete fate or serendipity that saw their stories interlink and intertwine over the time horizon.