This book moved me to tears on many occasions. We hear about the holocaust in history lessons and from documentaries but somehow, this story seemed even more painful to take in. Perhaps, because seeing someone’s story in the written word, rather than acted out on tv or delivered as a history lesson made it all the more real.
I found myself over and over reeling at the evil cruelty carried out by human beings to each other. How could that be?!
The book is very powerful and very well written and it was good to read of what happened with the main subjects wider family.
It isn’t a book I will forget or put away easily. It has left its own indelible mark.

I have read several books about the Holocaust but this one will stay with me for a long while. It has been the most graphic book that I have read about the atrocities that happened in the hands of the Nazi’s and the concentration camps.
It’s 1939 Gustav Kleinmann a furniture upholsterer and son Fritz Kleinmann are sent to Buchenwald in Germany were a new concentration camp is being built. Fritz is put to work building the camp. By learning construction skills, it stops him being exterminated from the Nazis. Whilst he is doing that his father Gustav is working in one of the factories. But one day Gustav is summoned to be transferred to Auschwitz. Fritz told by his friends to let him go. As anyone that goes there dies there, never to return. But the bond between son and father is too strong and Fritz decides to go with him. The story continues for the next 5 years. Gustav writing all what he sees and hears in a diary that is kept hidden.
The is a story about the bond between father and son and the resilience they had, to stay alive from the cruelty and suffering in the concentration camps. This was a real eye opener for me as I learnt more about what happened then in other books I have read. Although this is not a nice subject to be liked. This was a real page turner for me and I couldn’t put this down. I highly recommend it.

What can I say about the Boy who followed his father into Auschwitz, It was one of the most tragic memoirs I have read in a long time yet Jeremy Dronfield has managed to write Gustav and Fritz's story in such a way that no matter how tragic it is, it also has a wonderful undercurrent of love running through it. By using Fritz and Gustaz's diaries and getting them to relive their memories, he has written a book that shows how they managed to survive the hell they found them selves in, reliving their love for one another but also highlighting their resilience and cunning which helped them and some of their fellow prisoners to survive not one but four concentration camps during their long imprisonment , such a feat, its hard to get your head round, retelling how they survived the worst of treatments, such as starvation, beating, torture and having to see and endure the murders of their fellow prisoners and family. This is a book that should be read by everyone, The war may have ended over 70 years ago and to most of us it is just another date to remember but this book helps to remind and enlighten us all what some people endured during the horrors of war. The holocaust and the atrocities that occurred should never be forgotten.

Wow what a book, very emotional, a great story. Made it feel very true to life, lots of information in there. Couldn't put it down.

I struggled with this book, I feel it is q book to take time to sit and read. Not a book to dip in and out of. Compelling storyline and so tragic too.

Harrowing but compelling, this is the true story of Gustav and Fritz Kleinmann. It all starts in Vienna and travels to the pit of despair and beyond... a meticulously researched telling that goes far beyond the usual narratives of the Holocaust. An unbelievable story of defiance, humanity and adversity- and how there were good people despite the horrors.

5* A difficult read but one that will stay with me. A powerful introduction from Gustav’s grandson too brings it to reality. After all the hoo-ha about the Tattooist of Auschwitz (whether it’s true to the story or fictionalised), this book is a must-read and an eyeopener to the horrors of the Nazi regime.

My only gripe is that I thought there could be a better title. Whilst it’s accurate it doesn’t hit you between the eyeballs!!

Thank You Netgalley & Publishers For Granting My Request To Review This Book.

After Reading This, The First Question I Asked Myself Was “How Do I Give A Book Like This; Non-Fictional and About Such Harrowing Events, A Star Rating?”

I Thought “Do I Rate It 0 Or 1 Star Because Of The Atrocities It Shows Us In Detail? That We Could Do That To One Another And By Reading This Book, We’re Forced To See It And Accept It” Or “Do I Rate It 5 Stars Because Above The Atrocities, This Book Shows Love, Courage, Hope, Strength & Perseverance?” In The End, It Had To Be The Latter. I’ve Read Many WWII Survivor Memoirs But This By Far Is The Best And It Feels Awful To Say Other Peoples Misery And Struggles Have Made For A Brilliant Book, But If By Reading This, It Stops This From Ever Occuring Again, Then It’ll Be Worth It. Every Memoir I’ve Read Highlights A Different Perspective But For Me, This One Was The Most Detailed And Took Me On More Of A Journey.

Possibly The Best Book I Read In 2018

Another account of WW2 and it is as unbelievably sad as other holocaust stories. What makes this book interesting though is the timeline it goes across, giving you not only an account of a father and son who were in concentration camps for the duration of the war, but also recounting their lives before and after giving context to the people you are reading about as more than just concentration camp victims.

Well written and delivered with the right balance of emotions, realism and facts.

Thanks for letting me review this.

Wow! I am gobsmacked at what this family went through. It is beyond all comprehension and is unbelievable that, through miraculous twists and turns, they both came out of it alive. I did find it quite a slow burner to start but I was gripped by about a quarter of the way through. Highly recommended.

One word...WOW.
The writing,subject matter the book as a whole has your full attention from the start. It is a book that the book optic is harrowing and at times extremely difficult to yet it needs to be heard within the public domain.
How anyone ho survived the horror of the Holocaust and re-live that tim shows their inner strength.
Purely inspirational
It is a book that must added to the read text in any high school.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Penguin UK for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

This has to be one of the most difficult and harrowing books that I have ever read. I had to keep putting the book aside and reading something else before going back to it. As harrowing as it was, it was also a very interesting read. This story will definitely stay with me for a long time. I do feel that this should be on the school curriculum for children taking GCSEs to read. This would be a great way for them to learn about some of the atrocities that took place during the war.
A well written book that I would highly recommend to anyone to read

Wow, what an emotional read this was. Written so well with care and thoughtfulness. A story about a father and son in WW2 sent to the concentration camps. It made me smile and cry all at the same time, it was a heart breaking read yet so warming that a love between father and son could shine through after all the pain they experience. I really can’t praise this book enough, the author has put his heart and soul into this amazing account of what it was like under the Nazi party.

I am finding it very hard to describe what i have just read, so please bare with me.
I have been on an incredible journey, i have travelled from Buchenwald to Auschwitz and beyond. The story is about what happened during the seven year period of WW2. The horrors, cruelty and deprivation that a father and son endure had me more than emotional. This is a story of love and perseverance when this time in history was against them.
In my opinion this is one of the better holocaust memoirs that have been released. No i correct myself IT IS THE BEST. Be warned you will laugh and you will cry, oh yes you will cry. Let me say that i was very emotional. I have already passed this book on to my husband and he is a fussy reader.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, you will need a box of tissues.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Penguin UK- Michael Joseph for the ARC of this book in return for giving an honest review.

What an incredible journey. The injustice is simply heart-breaking, but this one enlightening story of love and perseverance helps us see the human factor in what so often becomes numerical statistics.

It is really incredible what fellow humans had to endure. How the perpetrators and perpetrated managed to forge an existence after these monumental events blows my mind.

The journey this book took us on was incredible. The lows we experienced reading the book pale in comparison to what actually happened. Likewise with the joys experienced during the liberations and reunions.

My eyes and heart were opened! Thanks you.

The inspiring true story of a father and son's fight to stay together and to survive the Holocaust.

The book tells of Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, who was seized by the Nazis in 1939. 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.

This book is shocking in its content, but above all a story of hope and the outstanding things that humans can endure for loved ones and to stay alive. I felt horror that such things actually occured and in some respects this book made me ashamed to be part of the human race that actually visited these horrors on innocent people.

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.

I can’t praise this book highly enough - well researched, beautifully written and sensitively handled, this is the true story of Gustav and his son, Fritz who find themselves ultimately in Auschwitz. The book also deals to a much lesser degree with their wider family.

The facts of the Holocaust are well known but this is such a personal and Intimate account that it is even more effective in drawing the reader in but can also be, at times, uplifting.

I think this book should be prescribed reading for schoolchildren in secondary schools. It brights the plight of this generation to light in a clear and simple way.

It seems that this year is one where books about the Holocaust have been published based on memoirs of the Jewish prisoners. This well researched book was a bit of a novel and a bit of a history book. It is correct that we should not forget.

The most overwhelming feature about this book is the love of a Father and Son. How they survived is nothing short of a miracle. The bravery of people in the face of such atrocities is humbling.

I thought this was a heartbreaking account of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazi Party within the concentration camps. While I have read a fair few accounts about the atrocities of the camps, this one appears to be unique to me. Despite knowing that the author and his father survived, it was still tough reading about their experiences and I was relieved when they were freed. I encourage anybody to read this book.

I think 2018/19 seems to be the year for books about the Holocaust. They seem to be popping up left right and centre! As I am very interested in this time of history so can not get enough of them! I am so glad I got to read this one. It is a heart-breaking read yet so inspiring. It was well researched and portrays this horrible time in history very well. It feels odd to say it is a real page turner with it being set in the harrowing time but it was a brilliant read.

Thank you netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review this great book.

So, in 2018, do we really need another book about the Holocaust? In the case of this one I think we do. In the face of many memoirs, fictions, academic and journalistic studies, what Dronfield brings to this story is the sense of the local and particular as he follows a single family of Viennese Jews.

From the Anschluss to the end of the war, this is an unashamedly emotive and deeply moving story as Gustave and his eldest son, Fritz, are rounded up and put on one of the first transports to a Nazi labour camp and then moved to Auschwitz.

Based on Gustave's diary that he somehow managed to hold onto plus interviews this book does a tremendous job of telling the personal stories at its heart against the backdrop of the war more generally. It's nice to see, too, Dronfield's gestures to our present as desperate refugees are refused visas to the US ('the United States had a theoretical quota of sixty thousand refugees a year, but chose not to use it') and face xenophobic treatment in the UK ('The press - with the Daily Mail at the forefront -had helped whip up paranoia about fifth columnists' - i.e. German-speaking Jews who had fled from Austria and Germany and now faced internment in the UK in case they were closet Nazis...) I couldn't help also reading a reference to Brexiteering isolationist rhetoric about Britain's lone stand against Hitler in the corrective comment from Dronfield: 'the RAF had become a coalition force, its British and Commonwealth pilots joined by exiles from Poland, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia. Britain still liked to think of itself as a sole nation, but it was nothing of the sort.'

Ultimately, though, this is a story about unimaginable human endurance and the love that binds Gustave and Fritz. Dronfield is not blind to the selfish instinct for survival that, of course, is a part of camp narratives, but in this story the there is compensating comradeship, friendship in some surprising places, organised resistance and sheer good luck, too.

A harrowing read but also, I think, a heartening one. Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.