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Daniel Finkelstein’s family experience at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century is one of miraculous survival. His new book ‘Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad’ was published on 8 June and this is your chance to hear and meet the author who will be in conversation with Raphi Bloom. Daniel Finkelstein is a British journalist and opinion writer. A former executive editor of The Times, he continues to write for the paper. He has been Political Columnist of the Year four times and recently joined the board of Chelsea Football Club. He was appointed to the House of Lords in 2013. Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decoratedhero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first personto recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in1933, 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 andchildren when Germany invaded Holland. Before long, the family was rounded up,robbed, humiliated, and sent to Bergen-Belsen. His father Ludwik was bornin Lwow, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitlerand Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists andsent to do hard labour in a Siberian gulag. Working as slave labourers on acollective farm, his father survived the freezing winters in a tiny house theybuilt from cow dung. |
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