The book was written by US historian Jeremy Dronfield. It is titled “The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz”, recently it was also published in German.

It is based on entries in a diary that Gustav Kleinmann could hide from the Nazis over all the concentration camp years, on many interviews and meticulous research, as well as on another book that Fritz Kleinmann published together with Reinhold G?rtner in 1995: “But the dog doesn’t want to die “.
Gossip – it lies on all fours,
but the dog does not want to die.

Gustav Kleinmann wrote many poems in his diary – that was a little help in dealing with the atrocities committed by the Nazi henchmen, the daily murders that they saw up close.

Peter Kleinmanns Familie und der Holocaust

Withing the overall theme, a couple of touches tugged at me as they illustrated how small gestures can mean so much. She felt her humanity restored by simple courtesies, such as using the term “ladies”, and that he held the door for her to precede him. Despite her awful experiences, these were important to her. There was a time when they were extended and received in civilized society as gestures of respect. Young men were taught those courtesies by their mothers and grandmothers; and young women were taught to accept them graciously in the spirit they were extended.

That’s a wonderful story about your parents.

I can remember a time when pride in the United States was the general baseline condition.

So thanks for that too.

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/musframe.htm

“Never again.” The tyranny and atrocities of Nazi Germany have been justly condemned by world opinion for over 50 years. But it is only recently that Communist despotism has begun to receive remotely similar attention.

It would be a great tragedy if Communism disappeared from the earth without leaving behind an indelible memory of its horrors. Communism was not essentially about espionage, or power politics, or irreligion. Rather it was a grand theoretical synthesis of totalitarianism… a theory which millions of people experienced as the practice of murder and slavery.

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Holocausts of Communism Test

http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi-bin/museum1.cgi

Western awareness of mass murders and other major atrocities committed by Communist regimes remains exceedingly low. How does your knowledge compare? Take this test to find out.

Headed by a quote from Solzhenitsyn,

I dedicate this
to all those who did not live
to tell it.
And may they please forgive me
for not having seen it all
nor rememberered it all,
for not having divined all of it.
–Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

32 questions on the horrors committed by Stalin, Lenin, the Soviets in general, although Latvia isn’t mentioned specifically.

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Search on string Bryan Caplan Communism gets lots of results, including articles by Prof. Caplan and also other websites; among them, at

http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2007/06/14/good-intentions-really/ ,

there are these excerpts (some of which is quoted material):

In 2007, anyone who doesn’t understand that communism is murderous and brutal is either willfully blind or woefully ignorant.

[Julian Sanchez is quoted as saying,]

“the unique reaction to the Nazi case has to do with a special horror at the intentions of that regime: Soviet communism, one might say, turned out to be massively murderous, while the extermination of an entire group of people was a core goal of Nazi ideology.”

Quite a few people believe that particular communist myth.

Communism was certainly supported by some based on ideals of “brotherhood” and “sharing”. But a large part of it was also based on hatred.

The myth of “good intentions” was eloquently answered by Bryan Caplan a couple of years ago on this blog.

[“The Road to Hell was Paved with Bad Intentions”]:

http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/the-road-to-hell-was-paved-with-bad-intentions/

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I absolutely agree that the horrors of Communism and the ignorance about it, and the — glamour! that it seems to have for some of the populace are shameful.

And what about Latvia in particular? Search for Communism Latvia and similar terms. There is material out there. For instance, you may or may not be aware of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga, which is discussed on Wikipedia as well as having its own website.

And there is a pdf of a paper, “CRIMES OF COMMUNISM IN LATVIA,” at

https://www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/konference/zlociny-komunismu/COUNTRY%20REPORT%20LATVIA.pdf

It begins with a quote from the book With Dance Shoes in Siberian
Snows, by Sandra Kalniete:

My mother had three wishes: returning to Latvia, seeing her brothers and our family and having a flat. All of these wishes have been fulfilled. But even today my mother wakes from a dreadful dream. Again it is night and someone is knocking at the door. Strange men enter and order her to get ready. The deportation nightmare begins, and my mother in despair thinks: “The last time it was a dream. Now it’s real.” On waking she gazes long into the empty night until she calms down and understands: she is home again. In Latvia.

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It’s probably only a small percentage, Artfl, but many people do share your frustration (anger) and dismay at the widespread ignorance about the 1000-pound gorilla in the room that seems to be successfully hiding behind a relatively tiny jackal.

Personally, I am still fighting the Viet Nam war. (This Kavanaugh disgrace is depressing and then some, but for me maybe the most depressing national event of my own life was our abandonment of Viet Nam.)

What a beautiful story, made more so by the insanity of the last few weeks.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
– by Anonymous