Fritz and Kurt

Product Information

LoveReading4Kids exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading4Kids means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. My new book, Fritz and Kurt, tells the extraordinary true story of two Jewish brothers in the Holocaust. It’s been nearly ten years in the making. I first discovered the story in 2013, when I learned of the existence of a secret concentration camp diary written by Gustav Kleinmann, the father of Fritz and Kurt. Fritz, along with his father, is taken to a Nazi prison camp, a terrible place, full of fear. When his father is sent to a certain death, Fritz can't face losing his beloved Papa. He chooses to go with him and fight for survival. Fritz And Kurt is a read suitable for any age, not just children. You will be full of admiration for the bravery of the brothers who lived through a time of great evil. 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. There are also notes for parents, guardians and teachers who may wish to understand how the story is being presented.

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield | WHSmith Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield | WHSmith

Fritz and his Papa were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1939, the beginning of a five-year struggle of loss, endurance, resistance and escape. The diary tells how, in 1942, when Papa was transferred to Auschwitz, Fritz volunteered to go with him. Fritz knew they would probably die there, but he couldn’t bear to be without his beloved Papa. When I read the diary’s account of that decision, I knew I had to tell this phenomenal story. The diary is too patchy and difficult to understand in itself (unless you’re a Holocaust historian), so I researched around it, found archived interviews left behind by Fritz (who died in 2009), and located Fritz’s brother, Kurt, who was still alive and living in America. Under Nazi rule, though, Fritz and his father are imprisoned, while Kurt eventually finds refuge with a family in America. Most chapters show Fritz and his father coping with daily life in Buchenwald (and towards the end, Auschwitz) but we do get glimpses of Kurt’s new life in America, where his experiences at youth camp form a striking contrast to the camp his brother is enduring. In this extraordinary true story, Fritz and Kurt must face unimaginable hardships, and the two brothers wonder if they will ever return home . . . 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.Author Guy Bass introduces SCRAP, about one robot who tried to protect the humans on his planet against an army of robots. Now the humans need his... a heartrending and absolutely necessary read about the scope and depth of the ­Holocaust… meticulous research and interviews, this powerful work of narrative nonfiction… This essential work shows young readers how the Holocaust came to happen and how two amazing human beings survived its horrors." While trying to get an academic career in archaeology off the ground, he began dabbling in writing fiction – a pursuit he’d ...

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

Returning to my original research, I made new discoveries and found important new insights, unique to the telling of the story in Fritz and Kurt. Fritz’s experiences at the hands of the Vienna Gestapo; the Nazi race scientists who studied the Jewish prisoners, the whole truth about the friends and neighbours who betrayed Fritz and Kurt’s family to the Nazis, Kurt’s struggle to adapt to life in wartime America without his brother and family – these and other details are new in this telling of the story. In the words of Dronfield - “ it is vitally important to remember what happened in those terrible years, and to do whatever we can to make sure nothing like it never occurs again […] we have to begin with memories and knowledge of what happened in the past, with understanding, and with compassion for our fellow human beings – all of them, not just the ones who look like us to share our beliefs.”Jeremy Dronfield has re-written his book The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz for children. He has also added in further information that he found out after writing his first book, so Fritz and Kurt is an updated, simplified version. He has included explanations as footnotes of Jewish words and historical events to aid the reader.

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield – The Federation of Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield – The Federation of

Fritz chooses to join his father, Gustav, when he is taken to a work camp, as he can’t bear to be parted from him. The story moves between the tale of their lives in various concentration camps and that of Kurt, the younger son, who was transported to America to start a new life.

Meanwhile, Kurt must go on a frightening journey, all alone, to seek safety on the far side of the world. The ironies continue. Gustav’s new ally at Monowitz was an ex-soldier and co-worker who simply couldn’t credit that Hitler would imprison Jews without cause. But neither could Gustav credit the number of closed trains he saw carrying thousands of Hungarian Jews to their deaths. “And all this in the 20th century,” he wrote with disbelief. A year later, starving at Mauthausen, a camp in Upper Austria, Gustav barely escaped being massacred by ferociously antisemitic Hungarian guards. (The Russians, by contrast, treated all camp inmates with respect.) He came to writing via a circuitous route. His first serious stopover in life was as an archaeologist. After a few years in rescue excavation, he did his doctoral research at Cambridge University, on the subject of art and religion in prehistoric Ireland. His thesis was published as a series of papers in international journals including Antiquity and Current Anthropology. As well as simple words telling the story, the whole book is powerfully and yet simply illustrated by Ziggy Greene. The RRP is the suggested or Recommended Retail Price of a product, set by the publisher or manufacturer.