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Author Robins, Steven L., author

Title Letters of stone : from Nazi Germany to South Africa / Steven Robins
Published Cape Town : Penguin Books, 2016

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  940.53092 Robins Rob/Los  AVAILABLE
Description 314 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents Machine generated contents note: 1.The Photograph -- 2.White Noise in the Suburbs -- 3.Breaking the Silence -- 4.My Father's Flight From Hell -- 5.My Eyes Open -- 6.Stumbling Stones -- 7.In Search of Eugen Robinski -- 8.Letters from Berlin -- 9.Artur's Escape -- 10.The Noose Tightens -- 11.The Boomerang -- 12.Edith's World -- 13.Cecilie's Burden -- 14.The Scientific Pathways to Destruction -- 15.The Tragedy of Triage -- 16.Doors Slam Shut -- 17.The Photo Album -- 18.War -- 19.Underground -- 20.Riga -- 21.Auschwitz -- 22.Finding My Father -- 23.Fischer's Footprint, Again -- 24.Optimism and Despair
Summary As a young boy growing up in Port Elizabeth in the 1960s and 1970s, Steven Robins was haunted by an old photograph of three unknown women on a table in the dining room. Only later did he learn that the women were his father s mother and sisters, photographed in Berlin in 1937, before they were killed in the Holocaust. Steven s father, who had fled Nazi Germany before it was too late, never spoke about the fate of his family who remained there. Steven became obsessed with finding out what happened to the women, but had little to go on. In time he stumbled on official facts in museums in Washington DC and Berlin, and later he discovered almost one hundred letters sent to his father and uncle from the family in Berlin during the Nazi terror. The women in the photograph could now tell their story. Letters of Stone tracks Steven s journey of discovery about the lives and fates of the Robinski family, in southern Africa, Berlin, Riga and Auschwitz. It also explores the worldwide rise of eugenics and racial science before the war, which justified the murder of Jews by the Nazis and caused South Africa and other countries to close their doors to Jewish refugees. Most of all, this book is a poignant reconstruction of a family trapped in an increasingly terrifying and deadly Nazi state, and of the immense pressure on Steven's father in faraway South Africa, which forced him to retreat into silence
Notes Formerly CIP. Uk
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Robins, Steven L. -- Family
Jews -- South Africa -- Biography
Jews -- Germany -- Biography
Jewish families -- South Africa
Jewish families -- Germany
Jews -- Persecutions -- Germany
Antisemitism -- Germany
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Germany
LC no. 2015494952
ISBN 9781776090242