‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. So said the philosopher George Santayana and in that spirit we are launching a new series of free history talks to reflect on and remember our Past Times. We are honoured to announce that the inaugural talk in this series will be from Jeremy Dronfield, the author of The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz.
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.