The boy who followed his father into Auschwitz : a true story of family and survival Cover Image

Book

The boy who followed his father into Auschwitz : a true story of family and survival / Jeremy Dronfield.

Summary:

The inspiring true story of a father and son's fight to stay together and to survive the Holocaust. In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was seized by the Nazis. Along with his teenage son, Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in. When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz, a certain death sentence, Fritz refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive: the love between father and son. Based on Gustav's secret diary and meticulous archive research, this book tells his and Fritz's story for the first time - a story of courage and survival unparalleled in the history of the Holocaust.

Record details

ISBN: 9780063019317
ISBN: 0063019310
Physical Description: xvi, 423, 16 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Edition: First Harper Paperbacks edition.
Publisher: New York : Harper, 2020.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Originally published, in slightly different form, as The Stone Crusher in 2018 by Chicago Review Press.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Part I: Vienna -- "When Jewish blood drips from the knife ..." -- Traitors to the people -- Part II: Buchenwald -- Blood and stone: Konzentrationslager Buchenwald -- The stone crusher -- The road to life -- A favorable decision -- The new world -- Unworthy of life -- A thousand kisses -- A trip to death -- Part III: Auschwitz -- A town called Ođ́ʺiĐ̄♭m -- Auschwitz-Monowitz -- The end of Gustav Kleinmann, Jew -- Resistance and collaboration: the death of Fritz Kleinmann -- The kindness of strangers -- Far from home -- Resistance and betrayal -- Part IV: Survival -- Death train -- Mauthausen -- The end of days -- The long way home -- Epilogue: Jewish blood.