The Kent House Series
Daniel Finkelstein
Held on Wednesday 10th January 2024
"What a triumphant evening to kickstart The Kent House Series" LO
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"A very worthwhile event for all who attended." DH
About Daniel Finkelstein
To launch our series we welcome Daniel Finkelstein OBE, the leading journalist and politician. He is a former executive editor of The Times and remains a weekly political columnist. He is a former chairman of Policy Exchange who was succeeded by David Frum in 2014. He is chair of the think tank Onward.
Interviewer: Stewart Collins
Stewart Collins is the Literary Director of the Kent House Series having also founded literary festivals in both Stoke-on-Trent and Petworth, West Sussex. A fifteen year career as a singer has been followed by extensive experience as a writer, broadcaster and festival director, the latter most notably as the Artistic Director of the large scale Henley Festival.
Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Epic, moving and important’ ROBERT HARRIS
‘A modern classic’ OBSERVER
‘An unforgettable epic of a book’ DAILY MAIL
Daniel Finkelstein’s family experience at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century is one of miraculous survival. It’s a story of secret archives and freezing wastelands, of forgery and theft, concentration camps and the Gulag. Of evil and the consequences of evil. And of freedom, and freedom’s reward. It’s the story of how Daniel’s family took a journey – which ended happily in Hendon.
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, winner of the Pulitzer Prize