Research Catalog

Title

The last train : a family history of the final solution / Peter Bradley.

Author

Bradley, Peter, 1953-

Publication

• Manchester : HarperNorth, 2022.
• ©2022

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 400 pages : illustrations, portraits; 24 cm

Summary

"The profoundly moving and deeply intimate true story of one Jewish family's fate in the Holocaust, following the thread from Germany to Latvia and, ultimately, to Britain. It was only by accident that Peter as a child discovered that his father, Fred Bradley, was in fact born Fritz Brandes. And it was only after his father's death in 2004 that Peter was able to begin uncovering the shocking details of this story and set out on the journey - literally and figuratively - that forms the basis of his book. Peter's family were German Jews living in Bavaria. In 1938, his father was interned in Buchenwald in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, only to be released the following spring and allowed to settle in London before the outbreak of war, aged 24, penniless and alone. There he awaited the arrival of his parents and other family members. But their fate was to be very different: shipped by train to Latvia, to the Riga ghetto and nearby internment camps, they were murdered. Peter was struck by the desire to not only to find out what had happened, but also to try to understand why. Of course antisemitism was at the root of this. But where did antisemitism come from in the first place? And why did it continue virtually unabated after WW2 despite such graphic evidence of the horrors it had caused? Such apparently intractable questions led Peter to travel to the forests of Latvia to see where his grandparents died and to dig deeply into the roots of this prejudice. This book tells that story"--Publisher's description.

Subject

• Bradley, Peter, 1953-
• Bradley, Peter, 1953- > Family
• 1939-1945
• Children of Holocaust survivors
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Biography
• Holocaust survivors > Biography
• Internment camp inmates > Germany > Biography
• World War, 1939-1945 > Personal narratives, Jewish
• Families
• Holocaust survivors
• Internment camp inmates
• Family members
• Germany

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Personal narratives – Jewish.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Finding my father -- The architecture of Anti-Semitism -- Articles of faith -- A small city in Germany -- Lives on licence -- The age of reason and unreason -- Four families -- The end of the beginning -- The beginning of the end -- The emigration trap -- Welcome to Great Britain -- The turning of the screw -- The road to Riga -- The cleansing of Latvia -- The end game -- Now we are free -- Searching for Sally -- Rays of light -- The shameful secret -- Choices -- The last word.

Call Number

JFE 23-1683

ISBN

• 9780008475529
• 0008475520
• 9780008474973
• 0008474974
• 9780008474980 (canceled/invalid)

OCLC

1333953632

Author

Bradley, Peter, 1953- author.

Title

The last train : a family history of the final solution / Peter Bradley.

Publisher

Manchester : HarperNorth, 2022.

Copyright Date

©2022

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1939-1945

Other Form:

ebook version : 9780008474980

Research Call Number

JFE 23-1683