Daniel Finkelstein in conversation with Sam Finkelstein on Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival
October 10 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
A Red Cross Telegram sent by Margarete Wiener to Alfred Wiener explaining that the family had been unable to obtain exit permits from the Netherlands.
Part of The Wiener Holocaust at Ninety exhibition event series.
Join Daniel Finkelstein at the Library for a discussion of his family memoir with his son Sam, who acted as the first reader of the book. The event will also be a chance to view the Library’s ninetieth anniversary exhibitions, one of which, The Wiener Family Story, features some of the documents and stories that are featured in Finkelstein’s book.
About the book: Daniel Finkelstein’s family experience at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century is one of miraculous survival. His mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred Wiener was the founder of The Wiener Holocaust Library and a decorated hero from the Great War. He 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 the Library’s predecessor organisation to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded Holland. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed, humiliated, and sent to Bergen-Belsen camp.
Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwow, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists and sent to do hard labour in a Siberian gulag. Working as slave labourers on a collective farm, his father survived the freezing winters in a tiny house they built from cow dung.
About the speaker
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.
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