Fritz and Kurt

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The key plot and reason I picked up this book is based on the history that it tackles and how it’s got a different target audience to a lot of similar stuff that I’ve read and that it’s unique in someways but at the same time there are a lot of similar books set in WW2 that are fantastic so this book was never going to be completely unique but that’s what I liked. The careful attention to detail certainly gives a real insight into the realities of how the Holocaust progressed. For a reviewer, it feels almost indecent to dwell upon the horrors inflicted, day by day, month after month, upon the innocent.

Fritz and Kurt - ReadingZone Fritz and Kurt - ReadingZone

Monowitz, when Fritz and Gustav arrived, was a fenced and mud-sodden field of sheds – no kitchen, no sanitation, no heat – to which they were marched for three hours each day before working on the uncompleted factory. Life has become ‘lawfully’ prejudiced and extremely dangerous for Jewish people within a very short space of time. Fritz operates with intelligence, bravery and daring at the level of what I can only imagine to be the comparison to a wartime MI6 agent or major league resistance fighter; and he was a starving, frightened, child without former survival or sabotage training who faced the prospect of his own murder on a daily basis. Even when the worst things are happening around him, Gustav was writing “I will not let these SS murderers grind me down. Knowing these exist, Jeremy continues, through all of life’s challenges and difficulties, is inspiring.The reader sees the close bond between Fritz and his father as they try to help each other and keep hope alive that there will be better days ahead. Another kid injured me so badly that I ended up in hospital, but when we went to the police, I had to apologise to him as he was Aryan.

Fritz and Kurt : Jeremy Dronfield (author), : 9780241565742 Fritz and Kurt : Jeremy Dronfield (author), : 9780241565742

Fritz and Kurt, their family, were Jewish putting them in terrible danger particularly when Fritz and his father were taken to a Nazi prison camp. The way every detail about the Nazi history and their camps gets mentioned at least twice aside, the book really works as a suitable eye-opening narrative. Syria and Ukraine are just two places where the UK and many other countries have accepted those fleeing their homes. I was relieved to find a ‘What Happened After’ chapter - written by the author on Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January 2022. In a very short time, the life they had known in Vienna, the ‘before Hitler came’ in Kurt’s words, was destroyed.

Even though he is hesitant to say that as “it makes it sound like I’m minimizing the horrific reality of the Holocaust, but, this story does have that element in it. On the other hand, Kurt has to travel all the way to America just to evade the all-seeing eye of Hitler and his troops.

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield | Goodreads

They despise everyone who is not an Ayran, which meant foreigners, people of colour, traveller folk, gay people and anyone who had different beliefs, especially Jews. The story of the two Kleinmann brothers was first told in the best-selling The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz, but this edition has been especially written for younger readers more like the age of the boys themselves and also contains some additional material discovered since the first publication. And it is because of this that books like this, which tell these darkest parts of our history, are so vitally important. With this in mind, and my role as a high school teacher, I have begun to look for books about the holocaust that I could introduce to students studying the war.It also tied in well with the point that the author was telling a true story and that this was something that had happened and had a specific ending. I have a fairly wide reading history when it comes to the Holocaust – certainly greater than the average man you could point to on the generalised commuter bus. They are grateful to be together: to have each other to lean on for support and their strength, hope and courage is a theme throughout the story.

Fritz and Kurt — Just Imagine Fritz and Kurt — Just Imagine

Although, one thing that perhaps does not come across so explicitly in this version, because of the child’s viewpoint, is “their father’s determination to survive. The snowball effect of the ensuing hate propaganda spread from the USA to Europe, and the election of Adolf Hitler as leader of the German Reich in the 1930s became the anacrusis of the Holocaust. I was very relieved to see that readers will not be spared the truth, but are not subjected to more graphic scenes than I as a parent would want in their heads.With the knowledge that the author was close to Kurt Kleinmann, the Kurt of the title, children will be reassured to know that he survived and that his family have given the book their blessing. Like bloodthirsty dogs, Jewish people were hunted down by Hitler's loyal subjects, street by street and many were taken away to an unknown fate. In an introduction, the author sets the story of Fritz and Kurt in its historical context, explaining what the Holocaust was, how it came about and who was affected.