The Inspiring Tale of a Family's Triumph Over Oppression

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin stripped away nearly everything from a family, save for their enduring love for one another.

Daniel Finkelstein recounts how his mother attended services at Anne Frank’s synagogue in Amsterdam after their families escaped Nazi Germany, with the two girls attending nearby Montessori schools. Eventually, they found themselves imprisoned in close proximity at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne tragically died shortly after Mirjam reached safety in Switzerland.

In his poignant memoir, Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin and The Miraculous Survival of My Family (Doubleday, 2023), Finkelstein refrains from speculating on why his mother survived while Anne did not, allowing the harsh reality to speak for itself.

As a columnist for the Times of London, Finkelstein refers to his book as a narrative of how overwhelming historical forces wreaked havoc on two joyful families, ultimately returning what remained to dry land. Yet, Two Roads Home transcends this framework; it is a profound reflection on the devastation the Holocaust inflicted on his mother's family and the Gulag on his father's. The book serves as a critical reminder of the world's previous indifference to tyranny.

Anyone who viewed the film “Oppenheimer” may have left with the impression that America's most significant moral failing during World War II was the atomic bomb. However, Two Roads Home subtly reveals that long before the Manhattan Project was shrouded in secrecy, another grave moral failure was unfolding in plain sight: the West's profound inaction amidst mass murder.

Finkelstein quickly dismisses the notion that the Allies