“How did they get out?” Spend any amount of time among Jews of a certain age, and once done kvelling about their grandchildren and complaining about various physical ailments, the question is likely to arise. There is at least a comfort in not having to explain what is being asked.
For Daniel Finkelstein, the author of Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad, it is not one with a straightforward answer. The journey to freedom on which his family embarked following the outbreak of the Second World War encompassed Switzerland, Paraguay, the United States and ultimately Britain, via the death camps of Belsen and the gulags of Siberia. That any of them survived, and he should be around to tell the story, is little short of miraculous.
Breathless yet thoughtful, this book is part memoir, part historical tome and part thriller. Such is the cast of characters the reader encounters, from Anne Frank to Hermann Göring and Kazimierz Bartel, that one is reminded of the life and times of Forest Gump. Except, of course, serendipity is less of a focus for the Finkelsteins and Wieners. Survival is what counts.
Split into the before, during and after the war, and between the stories of his mother and father’s sides of the family, we have little time to feel settled in one corner of history before being whisked away – by cattle wagon or on foot – to witness a new horror. Like Finkelstein’s family, we are constantly on the move.
So, how did Ludwig and Mirjam, the author’s parents, survive? Planning helps – many families were separated not only by Nazi prison guards but by Soviet trains departing without notice. Documents are like gold dust, while the love of family and respect of friends provide strength. But these qualities only take the powerless so far. In war, cruelty is arbitrary. Bribe-takers unreliable. Luck runs out.
Still, there are brief moments of levity amid the brutality and chaos. From absurd Soviet accounting practices to the accidental harvesting of weeds rather than crops. But for the most part, release comes only when family members make it to safety.
The book raises questions which the reader, fortunately, does not have to answer. For example, say you’re a Polish business owner in 1939, would you rather be captured by the Nazis or the Soviets? Don’t worry, you won’t have a choice. Hitler and Stalin have already – secretly – agreed to split Poland between them.
There are other questions for which no answers – or at least no satisfactory ones – exist. Why is it that the fate of Poland is so little discussed in this country, not least when the violation of Polish sovereignty was the reason Britain declared war on Germany? Or why Soviet crimes against humanity have gained so relatively weak a footing in public consciousness?
Given its impact on his family, Finkelstein is understandably sceptical of ideology. Indeed his last book, a collection of columns for The Times, was entitled Everything in Moderation. His love for the suburbs forms part of that. An ode to life marked not by war, hunger and death but by civility, classrooms and bread.
Could it happen again? Transport the Jews of 1920s Lwów to modern-day north London and, though they may be impressed with the variety on offer at Brent Cross Shopping Centre and the speed with which cars career down the Hendon Way, it would not be so alien. They lived quotidian but meaningful lives too.
Indeed Jewish people, like everyone else, remain at the whim of dictators and would-be conquerors. While antisemitism, a conspiracy theory predicated on the lie that Jews (which ones?) congregate (where?) to manage world affairs (will there be food after?) continues to thrive.
Implicit throughout this brilliant book is the understanding that, for every survival story like his, there are millions unwritten, their narrators gassed, shot, frozen or starved to death – evacuated to the east, as the Germans euphemistically put it.
What makes Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad remarkable is not simply the story, the detail and the historical records to which the author has access. But, with two of every three European Jews dead by 1945, that anyone was left to tell it at all.
â â â â â 5/5
