Fritz and Kurt

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Syria and Ukraine are just two places where the UK and many other countries have accepted those fleeing their homes. Jeremy Dronfield (Author) Jeremy Dronfield is a biographer, historian, novelist and former archaeologist. It’s hard to comprehend that this was only barely 78 years ago, the average lifespan of a modern day European man or woman.

The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz by Jeremy

The consequences of this resistance is something he wants readers to understand, because people are using very similar language. Discovering David Ziggy Greene’s art was a major step – his beautiful touch with stark, angular figures is perfect, with a charm and humour that help make the subject accessible for kids. The way father and son wrote and spoke about their bond and what happened… Jeremy felt “so strongly that this was a story that had to be told. This is a true story about the Kleinmann family, with the main focus being on the sons, Fritz and Kurt.Yet I found myself wishing the whole book had focused on Kurt, whose challenges in settling in America — learning the language, making friends — would have been easier for younger readers to relate to, with no need to water them down. I haven't read Dronfield's book about the Jewish family split by the second world war, but I was fascinated to hear that the author has retold it for a young audience. An adaptation of his bestseller The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz, Dronfield tells their story for children effectively and with sensitivity, conveying the horror and cruelty of their treatment in the camps but showing young readers how Fritz and Papa cared for each other and how fellow inmates defied the Nazis to support fellow prisoners and even to form a resistance. The illustrations were excellent, and reminded me of Michael Foreman's regular WWII work with Michael Morpurgo. The story of Fritz and Kurt, and their family, deserves to be heard; how people manage to have such hope and courage in the darkest of times is a wonder to me.

Book review: Fritz and Kurt - A moving Shoah book for older

My conversation with Jeremy Dronfield was about an hour in total, so some parts I have had to leave out. Anyone new to Auschwitz history may be unaware, as I was, that one of its objectives was to set up a local camp at Monowitz that would harbour a workforce to speed up the building (for the flagging war effort) of a nearby chemical factory. I spent many a moment throughout the book gasping with my hand over my mouth, or feeling relief or wanting to yell out in anger or joy. He knew it was in preparation, though, and was thrilled that his story would be read by coming generations of young readers.Fritz and his Papa were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1939, the beginning of a five-year struggle of loss, endurance, resistance and escape.

Fritz and Kurt (Audio Download): Jeremy Dronfield, David Fritz and Kurt (Audio Download): Jeremy Dronfield, David

A year later, starving at Mauthausen, a camp in Upper Austria, Gustav barely escaped being massacred by ferociously antisemitic Hungarian guards. It's based on the true story of the Kleinmanns, a working class Jewish family from Vienna, that was told for adults as 'The Boy Who Followed his Father into Auschwitz'. Dronfield rightly states that "It is vitally important to remember what happened in those terrible years, and to do whatever we can to make sure nothing like it ever occurs again. Both Fritz and his papa survived, through luck, determination, but mostly we feel through being together, and were reunited with Edna and Kurt after the war, though by then Kurt had almost forgotten how to speak German. Brothers Fritz and Kurt Kleinmann were fifteen and eight respectively when Nazi Germany invaded Austria.I was apprehensive at first, worried that he would not be able to handle the narrative, but the narration played to his strengths. The story follows both brothers – Kurt to America who bravely voyaged alone aged just eleven years old. In 1942, Tini and her youngest daughter Herta are sent east on a transport in 1939 with hundreds of other women and children as part of the Nazi’s ‘the Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. It’s important to remember, too, that during those years, there were some “extremely dangerous brushes with death”.

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield – The Federation of Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield – The Federation of

There are lots of first person accounts of the Holocaust but this is an important addition, with lessons to apply to the world today. That said, The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz, written by historian Jeremy Dronfield with contributions from the surviving Kleinmanns, is no common-or-garden Holocaust account. It barely needs to be said that the two suffered a catalogue of torture, misery and near-death there for six years. When Fritz and his father are sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald and Auschwitz) it seems as if they have no hope of survival, but somehow, they pull through, with thousands of highs and lows along the way.For I thought The Tattooist of Auschwitz was a well-made book, which it is, and somehow multiple thousands of copies were printed with a quote from my review in them. Throughout the book, Dronfield highlights their resilience, and that of others they met in the camps, providing a sense of hope. But I think there are many children who will enjoy reading it for what it is: an astonishing story of the resilience of the human spirit.