Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends

by Linda Kinstler

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg:
 
“After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!’”
 
Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs’s killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs’s pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying.
 
Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection,  Come to This Court and Cry  is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust, World War II, War, Historical, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

Published August 23, 2022

Reviews

[Stacey B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this wouldn't be the best time for me to read this book,
but felt there would never be a perfect time to read this.
A well researched and accurate book with documented history and other facts I wasn't aware of, the author writes this story in a way that reads like a mystery/thriller. Unfortunately it is neither.
Not all judicial systems can be compared with ours in the USA. The tribunal taking place in Nuremberg was given the task to seek those who were guilty of committing acts of war crimes. The tribunal consisted of a member plus an alternate selected by each of the four signatory countries, yet there many sessions and different judges were appointed. Mossad went back to hunt down the "Butcher of Riga" and got him. "On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg:
“After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries:' ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!’”
There are many books written about what this man did, but they don't include the trial.
I finished this book in silence which is the same way I finish all the others pertaining to ww2 genre.
Thank you Linda Kinstler for writing this book. You gave me a few more history lessons.

[Jen Burrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part history, part investigative memoir, Come to this Court and Cry is an intelligent account of the Holocaust in Latvia as told through the lens of the law. Exploring the sensitive subject of historical revisionism through the ongoing case of Herberts Cukurs, Kinstler poses the question what if the antonym of 'forgetting' is not 'remembering', but justice?

It's a captivating, thought-provoking read, providing the reader with an insight not only into the historical facts of the Holocaust in Latvia, but also the importance of interpretation, and the way historical crimes are addressed by the law.

*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been 77 years since the end of World War II and the Holocaust. We know a lot about what happened but, as Linda Kinstler finds as she tries to track down any information about a grandfather who disappeared, there are things that we will never know. Documents were destroyed. Mass graves were obliterated. We have survivor testimonies but not everyone was willing or able to talk about what happened to them. Now, after so many decades, many of the last survivors and perpetrators have passed on. In Come to This Court and Cry, Kinstler investigates two mysteries. First, there is what might have happened to Boris Kinstler. The second—and the one that ends up being more successful—is Kinstler’s exploration of what Herberts Cukurs did during the war and why Mossad agents assassinated him in 1965. What connects the two men? They both served in the notorious Arajs Kommando, under the command of the SS in Latvia...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

[Caren · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no doubt that I will reread Linda Kinstler’s historical investigation of “How the Holocaust Ends”, as its intensity and meticulous research demand it. Her pursuit of the “long afterlife of {Herberts Cukurs’s} assassination is a story of justice deferred, delayed, circumvented, undone. It is an illustration of the difficulties of reconciling the parallel tasks of the judge and the historian.” Kinstler’s study of the Holocaust narrative of Latvia, particularly of Riga, focused on the controversy of Cukurs’s Holocaust activity, a former Nazi seen by some as a Latvian hero who had “saved” Jews, and by others as the “Butcher of Riga”, having been involved in the murder of approximately 30,000 Jews and deserving of his assassination by Israeli agents in Brazil in 1965. Kinstler was drawn to this controversy because her grandfather had belonged to the same “killing unit” as Cukurs.

However, the scope of Kinstler’s dynamic investigation became much broader as she discovered that the tides of revisionist and nationalist forces within the courts in Latvia threatened to pardon Cukurs’s crimes. This pardon, and the denials of similarly politically-motivated countries, would put aside survivor testimony, calling into doubt the “truth” of the facts that had been established in Nuremberg and in other trials of Nazi criminals. The most powerful image for me was Kinstler’s reference to Shawcross (British prosecutor) in the Nuremberg courtroom, conjuring the voices of mankind “crying out a single simple plea…struggling now to re-establish in all countries of the world…liberty, love, understanding – com[ing] to this Court and cr[ying}: “These are our laws – let them prevail.”

Kinstler questioned whether the “antonym of ‘forgetting’ is not ‘remembering’, but justice?” Her detailed portrait of the activities of Cukurs in Riga, of the investigation into the nature of his participation in the “cleansing” of Jews from Riga, and of his escape and assassination in Brazil was brilliantly written. The efforts of survivors and those dedicated to keeping the memories of the Holocaust alive continue to be threatened by denialists, revisionists and nationalists who are politically motivated to negate the “truths” told by Holocaust witnesses and to, therefore, cleanse their national slates of any complicity in the genocide that occurred.

[Matt Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a thoughtful memoir that explores a famous holocaust era war crimes case in Latvia. Kinzler touches on the Nuremberg trials and considers their promise and failures while exploring the killing of a famous Latvian SS agent by Mossad in the mid 1960s. Along the way, Kinzler considers the impact of memory on her family legacy and—more so—the meaning of memory and justice for survivors, descendants, and a national identity.

The book raises more questions about justice than it answers (as it should). I particularly enjoyed the interviews with present day survivors and Kinzlers contemporary review of post-holocaust justice. This was a measured and insightful handling of personal and societal trauma and how legal systems can help or obstruct it.

[Anna Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional book. Reflective, intelligent, sad. The epitome of looking at an object from all sides. Kinstler’s connection to the holocaust in Latvia just means she gets close to the heart of the thing. Highly recommended.

[Paul Bindel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind bending.

[M. C.]

An amazing feat—deeply reported, beautifully written, original & haunting

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

El 25 de marzo de 1949 Boris y Viruta se casaron en Riga. Un mes más tarde, él desapareció. Apenas unos días después, las autoridades soviéticas le notificaron el suicidio de su marido. La joven Viruta estaba por entonces embarazada de cinco meses y la KGB le advirtió que no buscara el cuerpo. Pasaron 15 años. Un día de 1963 la policía secreta la citó de nuevo para hacerle una única pregunta: ¿ha tenido noticias de Boris?

Vuelan casi 50 años más, nos hallamos en 2016. A una estudiante estadounidense que curiosea en una librería del casco antiguo de Riga le llama la atención una novela desde la mesa de novedades. ¿Su título? Jus Nekad Vinu Nenoglaniset (Nunca lo mataréis). Abre el libro y en primera página se topa con el nombre de su desaparecido abuelo al que nunca conoció: Boris Karlovics. "No fue exactamente vértigo lo que sentí al ver su nombre, sino cierta inestabilidad, una sensación de estar en dos lugares al mismo tiempo. Fue como encontrarse con un anacronismo en carne y hueso, una especie de emboscada". Desde ese día, Linda Kinstler (1991) se sumergió en una investigación para descubrir lo ocurrido con su antepasado que, como entonces ya sospechó, no iba a tener un final feliz.

Seguir leyendo aquí:

https://www.elmundo.es/papel/historia...

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up whilst on holiday and managed to finish it within three days. It was incredibly well researched and written. I enjoyed how the narrative was accessible and able to convey complex ideas. The perspective of the author was what piqued my interest, her identity as being both an observer and also affected by the holocaust allowed her research to be presented clearly and also give insight in to the emotional ramifications of her findings. The people who she met whilst she undertook this journey had such varying perspectives that it captured the kaleidoscope of humanity and the human response to traumatic events.
The narrative of the author grappling with her family history and trying to uncover what she could about her grandad through his connection to two well known Latvians shows how common it has been for perpetrators to be able to disappear and the knock on effects of their actions and disappearance. I also enjoyed how the author represented the conflict that Soviets being both liberators and victimisers of eastern European states.

[Aves ౨ৎ]

Mid writing but really interesting content 🙂

[peebee · Rating 5 out of 5]

still processing!! some of the most cogent and moving narrative nonfic i have ever encountered. i really think this book is exceptional and the questions it poses will reverberate with me for a long time.

kinstler unravels her family history, which turns out to also be the history of the Holocaust and of Latvia, a country whose history in the 20th century was made and unmade, and then made again, through continuous geopolitical upheaval, war and occupation. at the beginning of the book, kinstler foregrounds a question first posed by the Jewish American scholar and historian Yosef Yerushalmi: 'Is it possible that the antonym of "forgetting' is not 'remembering', but 'justice'?" what follows is a meticuously researched and profoundly meaningful exploration of the idea of 'justice', and its relationship to the two frequently conflicting arenas of law and history. how do survivor testimonies reach from the past into the present to expose the truth? and how do we steward the truth into the future when the last survivors of the Holocaust have died and 'the truth' becomes a battleground for revisionism and (literal) relitigation? what does 'doing justice' look like once survivors decide they have had enough of documenting, preserving and reliving their pain, of having to 'prove' their own annihilation? (this last question in particular really interests me as someone who spends a lot of time sitting in courtrooms watching survivor testimonies get picked apart)

kinstler doesn't provide any straightforward answers to these questions because there are none. the only thing i can conclude with any certainty after finishing this book is that we are always having to live in the aftermath of some damage, and repairing that damage in the hopes of a more just future requires urgent and candid engagement with the past. no embellishments, no minimisation. i also had a real diasporic moment reading this book and realising how strongly i desired to learn more history, to understand the full scope of history's gravitational force over my own life. kinstler has done something really powerful here and i'm so excited to explore her other writings.

[Banuta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm enthralled, inspired, and deeply disappointed. Kinstler looks into a story that needs to be told and she does so with tremendous commitment and thoughtfulness. War criminals like Arājs, Cukurs, her murdering grandfather, let alone the Holocaust in Latvia: these are all hard topics to address and she goes into them with care until... until she dismisses Latvian attempts at Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. And that's when I get annoyed. So much has been done by activists and artists in the last decade yet here Latvia's story continues to be subjected to the usual colonial narrative, and given Kinstler's journalistic chops, I expected a more insightful discussion.

The book hits a particular low when an entire chapter is devoted to Juris Millers, a third-rate Alex Jones wannabe, a man devoted to sensationalism, and his ridiculous musical about Cukurs. It's as if Ernst Zundel made a Holocaust-denying musical in Hamilton and his thirteen friends came and gave it a standing ovation and you used this as proof that all of Canada is rife with anti-Semitism. Kinstler is only too eager to tar the whole country with a negative brush.

These days my Twitterverse is full of discussions about the invisibilisation of histories - the Baltics, Ukraine, Poland - and how their story is 'Westsplained', how members of dominant cultures tell these countries what their history is, rather than listening to how they tell it themselves. Kinstler consulted with major Latvian historians and went to Riga herself. As far as I'm concerned, Kinstler could have done better.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This outstanding book has an affinity with the equally excellent East West Street by Philippe Sands in that it is an exploration of law and international history entwined with family history. In this case, however, the family history is rooted (at least partially) on the other side of the Holocaust, as Linda Kinstler's grandfather served in a notorious Latvian paramilitary unit that was involved in some of the most horrific Nazi atrocities in the Baltic region (and he may have also been a KGB agent).

The book follows Kinstler as she searches for traces of her grandfather, but it also revolves around the (frankly bizarre) story of Herberts Cukurs, another Latvian Nazi collaborator who served with Kinstler's grandfather, was assassinated decades later in South America, and was subsequently investigated by Latvian prosecutors to determine whether he should be exonerated post-mortem (NB: the answer to that is a resounding no).

The subject matter is obviously grim, but the book is gripping, moving, insightful, and thought-provoking. It's a detective story, a legal drama, a historical account, and a memoir all in one. Well worth reading.

[Ailsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really informative:

A bit of a misleading title. It’s not really about her grandfather, it’s about Cukus, the Komandoo in Latvia under the German’s, Mosad’s butchered assassination and the Jewish community trying to pick up the broken pieces.
As British,my country (apart from the Guernsey islands), was the only country in Europe not to be occupied by either the Germans or the Soviets; so I thought that I had a pretty good knowledge of the Holocaust and it’s actors in it. However, I find it interesting, that probably because of this, we probably spend too much time on one’s own country’s history, to the extent that we don’t know enough about others. For that reason, I had never heard of Cukus before reading this book and for that I’m sorry-because, this book chronicles right up until the present date of the 2020’s, and you could say that we have been paying so much attention to COVID, that we loose sights of stories like this. Stories that can bring us together in understanding, and in the sharing of European history, rather than trying to tear us apart.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The highest compliment I can pay an author is to say I wish I had written their book myself, and that definitely applies here.
This is an example of one of my new favorite genres -- the book that is mostly about some research topic, but also just a bit about the author's own motivations for undertaking the research. In this case, Kinstler investigates the fate of a Latvian "convicted" (in a kind of extra-legal "we know what you did last summer" way) and subsequently assassinated by Mossad in Brazil because, well, who wouldn't be interested in that. But she also investigates this person's fate because his past is somehow entwined with the past of her own grandfather, a mysterious & elusive figure about whom her own family -- including her Jewish grandmother, who married him, seems to have known next to nothing.
Her balance of personal and scholarly interest in the subject, her incredibly knack for investigating, interviewing, and writing -- together make this book an extraordinary journey for any reader, just as it must have been for the author herself. An absolute triumph.

[athenrry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je conseille vivement à tout le monde de lire ce livre, que vous soyez passionnés d’histoire ou non.
C’est un livre qui nous plonge dans cette période sombre qu’est la Shoah et qui parle de la justice et du souvenir.
L’autrice nous plonge dans la vies de toutes ces personnes interrogées pour ce récit, toutes celles qui l’ont aidés, ou tout simplement celles dont elle tente de retracer l’histoire et c’est infiniment intéressant de découvrir au fur et à mesure que rien n’est noir ou blanc, et que les Hommes sont des êtres divers et compliqués.

[James Vogl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the hundreds of Holocaust books I’ve read I struggled with this the most. Story or textbook? Was just all over the place. At least I learned something about Latvia which is where my grandfather was from.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings on this one. Kinstler tells the story of Herberts Cukurcs, a Latvian aviation hero who became an orchestrator and collaborator in the Holocaust in Latvia, which exterminated all but a handful of the nation's Jews. HC then moved to Uruguay where he lived quite openly until a Mossad hit team killed him in the 1960s. Nonetheless, in a surge of post-Cold War, post-Soviet nationalism, many Latvians tried to rehabilitate him and deny the extent of his crimes. A lot of this had to do with anti-Russian feeling in Latvia; it was briefly an independent nation before being swallowed up by the Soviets, briefly taken over by the Nazis during the war, and again incorporated into the USSR as they swept toward Germany. A lot of Latvians welcomed the Nazis as liberators and enthusiastically participated in the killing of Jews. This was interesting, but having read Tim Snyder's books I was also fairly familiar with it.

This book is a pretty good way to learn some Latvian history, and it also covers a few other Holocaust-related trials well after WWII. It isn't a systematic history of those trials, though. Furthermore, I left the book without a clear sense of what the intriguing subtitle "How the Holocaust Ends" actually means. I thought it was going to be about the passing of the generations of survivors and killers as we approach 100 years since the genocide began, but that was relatively under-developed part of the book. I also didn't like how the author centered herself in the story, even if her grandfather was in these Latvian killing units. A lot of the book feels like filler as she goes from archive to archive, interview to interview, and so on, rather than a history book where the author steps back a little bit. In short, I think this book over-promised a bit and then under-delivered, and while it would have been a great long-form essay I'm not sure it really had to be a full book.

[Michael Milgrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this book but also followed along in the Kindle edition so I could read the footnotes and see the pictures. (One quibble with the Ebook. Although the footnotes linked to the text, the pictures did not. Either they should have been in the book where they were discussed or there should have been links.) Ultimately, it is the interesting story of a Jewish journalist (the author) who discovers her family's link to the holocaust - her paternal grandfather from Latvia who was both a Nazi collaborator and a KGB agent! He was also linked, organizationally, to Herberts Cucors, another Latvian collaborator who was killed by the Mossad in Uruguay in 1965. The book goes back and forth between the grandfather's story, which is only fragmentary, and Cucors, who is the subject of ongoing revisionist attempts at rehabilitation that have been somewhat successful owing, in part, to the fact that he was killed without ever being tried (and also owing to right wing nationalism). While telling these stories the author offers reflections on law and history and memory and justice, with a lot of footnotes and a lot of references to mostly obscure (to me, at least) academics who write about such things. The story is fascinating, including the author's research and family history, but there is no focus, something the author admits at the end. Her reflections aren't anything new or particularly enlightening. Some of her observations on law, especially, seemed downright obtuse. The book has too many footnotes to be considered merely journalism and not enough focus to be history - it's somewhere in between. Given the content, the title is grandiose and a bit misleading.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book is "How the Holocaust Ends", and what Linda Kunster has done in this amazing piece of research is to show how law and history deal differently with evidence, how evidence gets lost and buried as time passes, and how the past can be obliterated. In Europe, as in Troy, "all was irretrievably lost, obliterated, erased". But not all, in fact. There are mountains of testimony as to what took place between 1933 and 1945, including in Latvia, where the author's family originated. The book begins with Mossad's assassination in Uruguay of one of Latvia's most notorious Nazi criminals - but one who had been a pioneering aviator and a national hero, and has recently been the subject of revisionist novels and documentaries and even a musical. A more shadowy figure in the book is the author's own grandfather, and she never finds out if he was a true Latvian Nazi or a true KGB agent, or whether he posed as both in order to survive. (And whether or how he survived is never really clarified.)
The book starts with a question: "Is the antonym of 'forgetting' not 'remembering', but 'justice'" and goes on to analyse how "remembering" and "justice" are different for lawyers and for historians, what evidence means and how "facts" are handled in both disciplines. It's a fascinating and very moving book about how Holocaust stories are passed down, reviewed, and sometimes altered.

[Mary Klinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thought-provoking book about the author’s search for information about the Nazi involvement of her grandfather, Boris Kinstlere, as well as his boss, Herberts Cukurs, known as the notorious Hangman or Butcher of Riga. It is unbelievable that the terrible horrors of the Nazi regime have become fuzzy, and how so many have stood up to demand that Cukurs and others instead should receive honors for their good deeds. How can there be such discrepancies? I feel for the author, as she would rather not believe her grandfather committed such hate crimes, but the evidence is not clear either way. So many years have passed since the Holocaust and still there are investigations into establishing the truth about those who were involved. One of my favorite lines was on the book jacket remarking how “history can be distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved.” I feel there are very similar acts occurring in this modern day regarding the American Insurrection of January 6th, 2020. The guilty just loudly and boldly assert that any accusations are false. Then they push back with their own (untrue) accusations! Why is the truth so hard to pin down? How can people just hide behind alternative realities? This book provides lessons for the past, for today, and for the future.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read that was sort of let down by exploring too many narrative threads.

This is a novel, in a wider sense, that is about national identity, memory and historical truth. In a narrower sense it's about a woman's journey into the mystery of her grandfather. On one level it's a book about the assassination of Herberts Cukurs by Mossad and the nationalist attempt to redeem him from war criminal to Latvian hero. And on another the murkyness of memory and the perception of history.

Kinstler explores many threads within this novel, the failure of prosecution of war crimes, the layers of grey within history and its acknowledgement among a population. (Also, a side note, that Israel has historically absolutely never given a shit about international law and just done whatever the fuck they wanted) and the struggle of the Latvian identity. A country caught been the Soviets and the Germans desperate for their own independence.

Where this book fails is that Kinstler is sort of side tracked by these many threads which makes the central narrative of the book hard to follow. I understand why, they are interesting threads but it does jar the flow of the general read. Interesting reading though.

[Kosta Dalageorgas · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can we really know the truth of something from “A to Z”? Journalist Linda Kinstler tries to come to that quixotic truth in this excellent volume which deftly weaves histoy, law, family memoir, and memory in a highly readable work. In many sections, the book reads like a fast paced thriller or gripping mystery.

Where does the job of the historian begin? How does that compare to that of a judge? Who decides what is true? In this amalgam of different genres, Kinstler tries to find out the truth about her mysterious Latvian grandfather, his activities in Latvia during WWII, and what actually happened to him. She couples that with investigating how WWII and the Holocaust and its memory are viewed in contemporary Latvia. In this twice occupied country during WWII (by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) who gets to decide whose testimony and memories are worth preserving and whose are not? How should Latvians who actively collaborated with and committed mass atrocities and genocide be dealt with? A fascinating book meant to be read and discussed by those interested in history, WWII, the Holocaust, family memoirs, memory, law and punishment.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Is it possible that the antonym of “forgetting” is not “remembering,” but justice?’

The survivors dedicated the rest of their lives to collecting and archiving their testimonies. They thought this would make a difference. The result was catastrophic. They had trapped themselves inside the logic of the denier, [...] ‘They had to prove their own death.’ Along the way, the annihilation of their families went from a fact to a historical question.

It's absolutely infuriating how current legal procedures jam up the wheels of justice for our ever-diminishing remnant of Holocausts survivors. This book offers no thread of hope for justice through the current law structures; only a stark and poignant observation of how the law is an impenetrable and elaborate smoke and mirrors setup.
Perhaps the closest we can get to justice is through influencing the courts of public opinion, by remembering and passing down the testimonies of survivors to the current and future generations.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends has easily become one of the most compelling books I've read in a long time. It's a novel that has both great personal and cultural stakes. The urgency of the author to explore her own family's history is matched by the urgency for the Latvian people, and by proxy people of every country, to come to terms with their relationship to the Holocaust. Namely, the book is an exploration of societal memory and justice, tackling how time can dilute even the most horrible attrocities and how we reckon with survirvors' accounts. The book's themes are especially haunting, if not foreshadowing, in the context of the geopolitical climate of 2025.

Come to This Court and Cry reads both partly like a spy thriller and partly like an autobiography. I found myself constantly trying to sit down and read.

[Serena Jampel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended to me by the inimitable Maya Jasanoff! This was excellent nonfiction with murder, politics, trauma, memory, all that good stuff. Kinstler takes the reader through the story of Herberts Cukurs, the "Latvian Lindbergh"-turned-SS member who was murdered by Mossad and dumped in a traveler's trunk in Uruguay. Kinstler weaves in her own family's unlikely origin — a descendant of both Latvian Holocaust survivors and Boris Kinstlers, a man who worked alongside Cukurs in cleansing the Riga ghetto and was later disappeared by the KGB. Her writing was excellent and the way these stories wove together was absolutely fascinating. The subtitle of this book is a reference to another interest of Kinstler's — what happens when there are no more living survivors to bear witness to the Holocaust? Their children inherit those memories in a real, legally-implicated way, leading to the kind of kafkaesque scenario now playing out in the Latvian courts: putting a dead Nazi on trial at the request of his descendants who want to revise his memory. I really enjoyed this book!

[Clare Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the Holocaust in Latvia and the role of the author's grandfather in a specific unit who carried out many executions of Jewish people by bullet. A huge amount of research has gone into this book to make it a captivating read. I understand that the premise of it is to discover more about the author's grandfather but to me, his role is so unclear as so little is known about it that it just appears at various parts of the story to little consequence. The story feels ultimately about Cukurs, his assassination and the revisionist approach being taken in Latvia with regards to Cukurs.

Overall it is a well written and well researched book. I noticed that the author sometimes writes in the present tense with regards to past events and I found that irritating at times. Also, I think the addition of photos of Boris in his Nazi uniform and of Cukurs would be beneficial in further engaging the reader.

[Zeb Kantrowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happened with other Nazi criminals after the Israelis grabbed, tried and executed Eichman? Under the orders of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliment) the Mossad (Secret Service) continued to hunt down perpetrators of the Holocaust/Shoah. One of those also found was Herberts Cukurs, the Butcher of Riga (Latvia), who was executed on the spot.

Years later, member of the Latvian right began proceedings to 'rehabilitate' Cukurs as a patriot who helped save Jewish Latvians. Though it might be true that he saved a handful of Jews, he also participated in the murder of over 30,000 Jews. He was a member of a group that was known to have worked with and for the Nazis.

While helping to research what Cukurs did during the war, Linda Kinstler (and American) finds out that her Grandfather (who she knew little about) was a member of the group that Cukurs worked with. What follows is her scholarly hunt for the truth about her Grandfather and his and Cukurs work during World War II.

[Jo Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read so much about this era, and additionally, I have visited Latvia, including the Holocaust sites and museums there. Therefore I already knew a lot of the history. Oddly, I have a different recollection of the museum in Riga. It was much more comprehensive and moving than the one the author describes.

I am glad that the history of countries where people were NOT in concentration camps is coming to light. This book provides some details about what occurred…and who did the killing.

My issue with this book is its narrowness in scope. While having a book concentrate on one or two people can work well (I’m thinking of the astounding books written by Philippe Sands), this book seemed without a true center to me. I kept thinking I had finished it, and on it went, yet, added nothing of significance to the story for me.

It is an important story that needs to be told…but it needed to be more concise and focused for me.