Emanating from (what was) Poland and Germany his grandparents’ lives, suffering and incredible achievements are recounted here in wonderful detail. You will get to know how Lados Group even printed people's passports which became a big business for Hugli. Finkelstein, a Times columnist and member of the House of Lords, isn’t trying to explain why these utopian ideologies arose. It was poignant moment while i was reading about Katyn massacre, during the stalin's regime almost 22000 murders took place of polish officers.

This is the type of book I always choose to read - WW2, Nazis and anti-Semitism, but I found this book over-long. I learned so much from this book particularly about the experience of polish Jews and the Katyn Massacre.Magnificently written account of the lives of Daniel Finkelstein's parents in the era of the Holocaust. I imagine this book will become important to the further teaching of the Holocaust on both an individual human level, and on a more socio-political one too. Quietly at the end, there’s a devastating reflection that for some unexplained and erroneous reasons the Nazi crimes are still considered somehow worse than Soviet crimes.

Sitting the whole night asking the Jewish people, filling the details in the form and getting the passport done for rescue.Photograph: Michael Kooren/Reuters A father and son at a commemoration of the liberation of Westerbork camp in the Netherlands.

The dignity and sheer determination of this family (and many others) caught up in this terrible time in history is awe inspiring - thankyou for sharing such a personal reminder that our liberty can never be taken for granted and that love is always stronger than evil. 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. The book is both personal and hugely informative, thought-provoking as well as moving and inspiring.Which is why Mirjam and Ludwik celebrated the ordinary and mundane and passed on the importance of the things that protect that – liberal norms, civil rights, and the rule of law – to their children. The author skillfully weaves together the stories of his grandparents, Alfred Wiener and Ludwik, highlighting their resilience and strength in the face of unimaginable adversity. It will, I am sure, survive and come to be be regarded as a classic of World War Two biography and history.