A fascinating book. I was interested because of trips to Poland - where my husband's family are from - and visits to the Schindler factory. The amount of research in this book is staggering and it's an emotional read too. Highly recommended for anyone who's interested in 20th century history.

This was a fascinating if long-winded tale that took me longer than usual to get through. For fans of historical non-fiction, in particular Jewish 20th Century non-fiction, it was a deeply personal and well-researched memoir.

The Lost Café Schindler by Meriel Schindler is an interesting and moving exploration of both history and family. In order to solve long held family mysteries after the death of her father, Schindler takes us far and wide through various sources, from Italy, UK, USA etc so to understand him more.
The memoir centres on the famous Café Schindler, launched in 1922 as an antidote to the horrors of the First World War, becoming the whirling social centre of Innsbruck—until the Nazis arrived
It is an emotional read at times, moving for so many reasons, Not just for Meriel but for other’s who stories where highlighted where they were being shunned from communities because of beliefs.
Very well written, a fantastic read.

Kurt Schindler was an impossible man. His daughter Meriel spent her adult life trying to keep him at bay. Kurt had made extravagant claims about their family history. Were they really related to Franz Kafka and Oscar Schindler, of Schindler's List fame? Or Hitler's Jewish doctor - Dr Bloch? What really happened on Kristallnacht, the night that Nazis beat Kurt's father half to death and ransacked the family home?

An impressive amount of research has gone into this beautiful book. The author has done the most amazing job. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

This book documents Meriel Schindler's mission to piece together the truth behind her family's history following the death of her father; it is a fascinating read - part personal memoir, part family history, part real life history.

Meriel's journey takes her to many of the pleasant places that her family lived in - Vienna, Linz, Innsbruck, the USA - and many darker places that many family members found themselves in due to their Jewish heritage.

It is an emotional read at times - it was fascinating to read of the thoughts and opinions of those living in the changing European continent before, during and after both World Wars. It was incredibly moving to read the stories of people who built successful businesses, fought bravely for the Hapsburg Empire - but then found themselves outcasts in their own country because of their culture and religion.

There are also some interesting sections regarding the youthful Hitler and his lifelong gratitude to the Jewish doctor who tended his Mother. I found myself unable to understand how the young man - who actually sounded like a decent human being at that time - was transformed into the hateful creature he became in later life.

The writing is beautifully descriptive - you can imagine the people, places and scenery (and there are some photographs to illustrate the narrative in places). The "Lost Cafe Schindler " in question sounds a wonderful place - THE place to be at the time - evoking the glamour of the inter-war years that we see in the old Hollywood movies of that period.

I would recommend this book if you are interested in 19th and 20th century history, and the stories of real people.living through those times.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

I was looking forward to reading The Lost Cafe Schindler but had to give up at 25% through. The endless description of war, trenches etc., drove me away when what I really wanted to read was obviously covered later in the book - the story of the cafe itself.

Thanks for the opportunity to read and review the book but sadly it was not for me.

The Lost Cafe Schindler is a vivid portrayal of a family’s brushes with history, from the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the importance of cake. The memoir centres on the famous Café Schindler, launched in 1922 as an antidote to the horrors of the First World War, becoming the whirling social centre of Innsbruck—until the Nazis arrived. Kurt Schindler was an impossible man. Meriel Schindler had spent her entire adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died suddenly in 2017, Meriel felt compelled to resolve her mixed feelings about him, and to solve the mysteries he had left behind. There was to be no hiding from his extraordinary legacy: not only his fractured relationship with his two daughters, Meriel and Sophie, but also the truth behind what were always assumed to be Kurt’s tall tales of their family history.

The physical manifestation of these towering stories lay scattered around the isolated cottage where Kurt lived out his final years. What Meriel discovered in her father’s home were chaotic piles of Nazi-era documents, and a treasure trove of family photo albums reaching back to before the First World War. In The Lost Cafe Schindler, Meriel explores the truth about her notorious and extraordinary family: Oscar Schindler, Alma Schindler, the composer wife of Gustav Mahler and Walter Gropius, Hitler’s Jewish doctor – Dr Bloch, and Franz Kafka. Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, Meriel explores her father’s actual whereabouts on Kristallnacht; when he was said to have witnessed the Nazis beating his father half to death and ransacking the family home.

Meriel’s journey of discovery has taken her around the world to Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Washington. She reconnected family members scattered by feuding and war. She pieced together a unique story taking in two centuries, two world wars and a family business. However, all roads always lead back to the family café. A café in the grand Austrian tradition in the very heart of Innsbruck. This is a meticulously researched and profound personal journey for the author who experienced the restorative power of writing which enabled her to reflect on memory, truth and trauma. A captivating, deeply moving and thoroughly engrossing read from beginning to end, the story of Café Schindler and the threads that spool out from it weave together memoir, family history and the untold story of the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Highly recommended.

The Lost Café Schindler is an in-depth family memoir and history of the Jewish experience in 20th century Austria.

An impressive amount of research has gone into this, and it's clear that Schindler has approached her sources with a lawyer's eye: for a book that covers almost a century of history, each incident is unpicked in meticulous detail. The result is a narrative which is at once clear-eyed and incredibly personal, interwoven with letters and documents so you feel like you are hearing from the people themselves.

There are perhaps a few too many tangents along the way, but Schindler's dedication to her subject is heartfelt, and it's safe to say this labour of love really brings the lost café to life.

I found this book incredibly moving as Meriel Schindler revealed her family’s history and the traumatic times her family lived through. I particularly liked the style in which she chose to write her family history, incorporating the details of her research in the present day as part of the story, as she delved deeply into her family’s past. Having been brought up with what may have seemed exaggerated stories told by her father, Kurt Schindler, she was able to verify a lot of what she had been told about the people and events that occurred under the Nazi regime. Highly recommended.

An impeccably researched and written family history and also a personal memoir unravelling all sorts of mysteries of this branch of the Schindler family and the tales told her by her fraudster father.

Lots here for anyone interested in Innsbruck, food and cafe society and how the family ran a smart cafe for many years that was the place to be.

It is a deeply comfortable and comforting read and sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

Unusual, original, moving and highly recommended.

Wow! What a book, at first I wasn't sure if it was just another family Holocaust memory book but there was so much more in here that it felt far more like a scholarly read like Phillippe Sands than anything else.
The claims of Meriel's father seemed far fetched but in fact the truth was far stranger.

I am a huge fan of a series of children's books set in Innsbruck in the 1920s & 30s which do cover a little of the material here but (as is to be expected in kidlit) so much wasn't covered.

I've already recommended this book to about a dozen people and would be most surprised if it didn't make my top books of the year in December.

I was intensely grateful when somebody mentioned this book to me because it covers a lot of areas I'm interested in. I collect a series of books set around Innsbruck and during many of the periods that The Lost Café Schindler covers, and I also write books with a lot of cake and food references in them. The story of an Austrian café and the lives that had wrapped about it was all very much up my street - and indeed it was. There's something rather moving and unusual here, and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat.

What also interested me here was the way in which this is written. Schindler hovers somewhere between family history and personal memoir, literary non-fiction and present day travel guide. It's an intriguing, intoxicating mix of form and style and sometimes it hits rather deeply. There is a lot here to read and reread in the hope that you read it wrong first time round and then, when you realise that you haven't, you read it again because you still can't quite believe it's true. Schindler's research is meticulous and rich, giving as much of herself to the story as she does with the information that she founds out, and you can almost feel her reactions in the archives or the reading rooms as she comes across something new. It's as much a journey into the present as it is into the past and that rather works for me.