Since I read Diary of Anne Frank as a child, I developed an interest in learning more about the Holocaust. Of the handful of books I've read on Holocaust history, this one was good, but I really wanted more from this book. This could be because history books are not my preferred genre. I found myself bored and skipping ahead at points, which I can never bring myself to do in a fiction work. But I did enjoy learning about the fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs, his assassination, and the post mortem prosecution of Cukurs. Linda Kinstler learns that her grandfather, Boris, served in Cukurs' killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent of the KGB. Her passion for researching the history and disclosure of her own family's involvement in the destruction of thousands upon thousands of innocent Jews gave the story a personal touch that kept me interested until the very end.
Thank you to Linda Kinstler, PublicAffairs, and Netgalley for my egalley!

Jewish, Jewish-law, biography, military-law, holocaust, legal-system, never-again, NEVER FORGET, investigation, inhumane, family, espionage, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-figures, cultural-exploration, cultural-heritage*****

What happens in a Jewish family's collective mind when they come to find that one of their own was
most likely guilty of working against their own people in Latvia during the German occupation? Was it justice or what if Mossad eliminated suspects who emigrated to South America rather than returning them to Europe for trials? This well written and (painfully) well researched (and documented) book chronicles the work done in the 21st century to investigate possible connection of a family member to "The Butcher Of Riga" and more. An emotionally difficult read for anyone, but worth the self-examination it engenders.
The book is backed by solid research and evidence from those involved. Very moving.
I requested and received a free e-book copy from PublicAffairs/Hachette US via NetGalley. Thank you!
NEVER FORGET and LEARN FROM THE PAST

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.

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.

Kinstler begins her book in what might strike some as an odd place for a work that spends so much time discussing legal culpability and rules of evidence. She begins in a book store, with a copy of a novel about the assassination of Herberts Cukurs based on actual events. Within a few paragraphs, however, it makes sense to begin this book with a novel. Kinstler repeatedly talks about how we use law, history, and story to organize the bits and pieces of what we know into a coherent whole. For example, there are multiple testimonies from survivors that place Cukurs at the scenes of massacres during the war. Some survivors claim they say Cukurs shoot people. Another survivor, however, explains how Cukurs saved her from the Riga ghetto and helped her escape to Uruguay. There aren’t any documents that definitively prove that Cukurs killed anyone; they only confirm that he was in the Arajs Kommando (which definitely carried out massacres of Jewish people). To make these fragments into a whole that tells us whether or not Cukurs was a perpetrator or a fellow traveler, we have to use what we know about the place, the time, the Holocaust, and so on. Kinstler presents everything she knows, then leaves us to decide on Cukurs’s guilt and if he deserved to be gunned down by Mossad.

In the same way that Kinstler meditates on the roles of literature, law, and history in determining the truth, she also returns to the questions of culpability and guilt. She references the Nuremberg Tribunal and other trials that sought to assign blame for the Holocaust and punish the perpetrators. So few people were tried. Of those who were tried, some served gallingly short sentences. But what about the people who followed orders? Who turned in their neighbors? Who voted the Nazis into power in the first place? Once you think about it, the ripples of guilt spread out to thousands. And to what end? It wasn’t possible to arrest most of continental Europe after the war. And arresting everyone wouldn’t bring back everyone and everything that was lost.

And what about Kinstler’s grandfather, Boris? Well, there even the best storytelling can’t bring him out of the shadows. It’s so sad that Kinstler ends up knowing a lot more about a probable war criminal than she can know about her own grandfather. She’ll never know if he was a perpetrator or an agent of the KGB or both. She’s like a lot of other descendants in that she will never know what happened to her forebears in the Holocaust. All that’s left are bits of documentation, stories, rumors, and a sense of denied justice.

This is a book of puzzles and family mysteries around Nazis and Soviets. Parts of it read like a thriller, and you follow the author whiles she does her own detective work. Recommended.