Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad
A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival
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Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad
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Narrated by:
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Daniel Finkelstein
About this listen
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Epic, moving and important’ ROBERT HARRIS
'I'm not sure I've ever come across quite such a revelatory account of the Holocaust and yet despite the horror and the sadness it's also a 'memoir of miraculous survival'. I can't recommend it enough' ANTHONY HOROWITZ
'A modern classic’ OBSERVER
‘An unforgettable epic of a book’ DAILY MAIL
From 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 Prize
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
© 2023 Daniel Finkelstein (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"A terrific piece of work, epic, moving and important, the grim history of 20th-century Europe encapsulated in one extraordinary, ordinary family." (Robert Harris)
"This truly remarkable book brings vividly home the horrors perpetrated against one family by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, serving as an indictment of their crimes against millions. Diligently researched...and on occasion unbearably moving, this is a powerful moral work about political extremism and the importance of bearing witness, but at the heart of it is love." (Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny)
"Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad is a tale of survival and humanity surrounded by death and brutality. At a time when Holocaust denial is on the rise among the young, and people talk fondly again of communism, it is a reminder that for all their problems, our wonderful, messy democracy and our great shared European civilisation must be constantly defended." (George Osborne)
What listeners say about Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad
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- Pushkin likes books
- 26-06-23
Not an easy read or listen
Not an easy read or listen, and nor should it be. Fascinating, compelling account of the horrors of recent European history. I knew a little of the Polish army formed in Persia, but was very interested to learn more. An excellent mixture of the personal & the political.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- J M Curtis
- 12-01-24
Too magnificent and moving for other words
See what I wrote as the title of this review - too magnificent and moving for other words
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- Tessa Ackerman
- 26-09-23
Powerful story of survival and family.
Both heartbreaking and heartwarming.
A familiar story of Jewish persecution and survival – both in the sense that I am aware of it, and that my family also lived through, mostly died, in those times.
Wonderful that the very human cost of persecution is recorded and remembered here in such detail and with such heart.
Many thanks to Daniel Finkelstein for the work he has done in creating this book. It was especially good to hear him read it himself.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- K. E. Upton
- 29-09-23
Making it real with the lives of real people caught up in war and politics
This book is beautifully written and very accessible. The power of personal testimonies of two families one who lived through the rise and fall of the Nazis and the other who lived through the rise and rise of Stalin. Both families went through similar deprivations but the consequences to the perpetrators were very different. They came together and the author the product of their union. I highly recommend it. I have learnt a lot.
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- potato head
- 19-01-24
important book, now as much as ever
when we are in serious danger in the west of forgetting that we nearly lost our humanity, this book comes to remind us and warn us that it wasn't long ago that people just like us, dehumanised and murdered en mass people just like us, while other people just like us, turned their faces away. A warm, beautiful and horrifying book. Read it.
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- NJMaxton
- 02-04-24
Stunning
A superb book describing in harrowing detail how two authoritarian states, led by lunatics, destroyed their own people. Needs to be required reading in schools.
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- Rachel Redford
- 03-07-23
An indelible listening experience
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.
It is impossible to find words adequate to describe the demonic and barbarous brutality meted out to the extended family and to the millions of other Jewish people . The dreadful facts and statistics are well known but I found the greatest strength of these 12 hours to be the haunting minutiae of the family’s lives.
As his extensive Acknowledgements at the end of the recording show, the author has had access to a uniquely rich source of family letters and documents which he has used to make his history viscerally palpable. Finkelstein’s family was no ordinary family – his grandfather Dr Alfred Wiener documented the antisemitism in Germany during the 1920s and 30s, material used during the Nuremberg Trials and now housed in the Wiener Holocaust Library which he founded .
This was indeed an exceptional family and detailing their experiences has given life also to the millions of unrecorded Jewish people who did not survive. It is a listening experience which cannot and should not be forgotten.
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5 people found this helpful
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- maggie
- 25-06-23
Compelling
I could not stop listening. We must never forget. Accounts like this are hugely important, as is the Wiener Holocaust library.
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1 person found this helpful
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- JRL
- 06-07-23
Haunting and astounding in equal measure
An incredible story of amazing courage. Should be on every school curriculum. Beautifully read too
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- Samantha Pearce
- 17-11-24
Wonderful.
Wonderful. I know of the story through friends. I am well aware of the Katyn Massacre and the millions sent to Siberia. Like most people I am aware of the Jewish genocide. I have also read in The Times about how his mother’s family tried to throw food to starving Anne and Margot Frank. Yet there is so much I don’t know including the fact that the Weiner family were saved by their “Paraguayan” passports. A truly amazing story and well worth a read.
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