Fritz and Kurt

Product Information

Careful consideration and due diligence are parts of the good practice of anyone doing their job properly. This applies to choosing texts for the classroom – it is one of the main reasons Just Imagine exists. When it comes to the well-being of individual children in the classroom, the teacher will ultimately know what is suitable. When it comes to factual and accurate information, we place trust in the authors (including illustrators), editors and publishers to carry out due diligence. Being Jewish, the Kleinmann family were hated by the Nazis. Older brother Fritz and his father were sent away to a brutal prison camp where they lived with cruelty and suffering every day. Then, when Papa was sent to an extermination camp, Fritz chose to go with him rather than be parted from him. This book had a lot of depth to it and was really interesting along with having loads of bits and pieces that I loved. One thing I found to be unique and quite nice about this book is the writing style and how it was written - the writing was telling the brothers story in real time jumping between the two but it also occasionally had hints as too what happened to them at the end of the war say things like ‘but Fritz didn’t know that yet’, and similar which isn’t something I see often in books and really liked. It also tied in well with the point that the author was telling a true story and that this was something that had happened and had a specific ending.

Fritz and Kurt (Audio Download): Jeremy Dronfield, David Fritz and Kurt (Audio Download): Jeremy Dronfield, David

Author Luke Palmer introduces his new book, Play (Firefly Press) about four boys growing up together, the challenges, the friendships, and what hap...For context, the family central to this story is the Kleinmanns. As a Jewish family in Austria, the 1930s was an unsettling time. Events lead to Fritz and his father, Gustav, being taken away. However, both father and son survived the war, as did Gustav’s secret diary. Kurt, the youngest child, was sent to the USA, while sister Edith was able to go to Britain. The eldest child, Herta, and the mother were taken away against their will at a later date. They never returned. After that book came out, many people who had been moved and inspired by the Kleinmann family’s story told me that they wished their children could read my book. At its core, it’s a story about children living through one of history’s greatest tragedies; it’s about children’s courage, love, and resilience. Young readers should be able to read it for themselves.

Book review: Fritz and Kurt - A moving Shoah book for older

This is a true story about the Kleinmann family, with the main focus being on the sons, Fritz and Kurt. The family live in Vienna and we find out what happens after Hitler is declared the leader of Austria. We are told through the story how Jews were treated and how the family managed as war breaks out. It certainly opened my eyes, just months after John Boyne did an adults-only sequel to his different covers for different ages The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, to see this be a junior rewrite of a mass market adult Holocaust book. I was left with the feeling this felt the need to be more educational than the adult equivalent. I also was left with the feeling that, in being so repetitive, the author did not have a firm grasp on his target audience's intelligence before he started. But I may have been wrong in seeing that as an issue. The story follows both brothers – Kurt to America who bravely voyaged alone aged just eleven years old. And Fritz who was old enough to be sent on the transport to the concentration camps with the men. It was a truly harrowing and awful time. Dronfield does well to give his own thoughts on the family's experiences, and include a timeline of wider events. One thing I would have liked would have been teachers' notes, as I suspect this may be well read in school classrooms studying WWII, and discussion questions would have been one useful addition.

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Of necessity, some of the brutality of concentration camp life has to be greyed out for this age group (it’s aimed at nine plus).

The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz by Jeremy

At the end of last year, I was invited by the Holocaust Education Trust to a series of seminars about the Holocaust, which included a trip to Auschwitz and Auschwitz- Birkenau. Following this educational experience and the visit, I made a promise to myself that I would continue to educate myself and those around me on the horrific events that happened during the Holocaust and inhumanly treatment of Jewish community. Fritz And Kurt is a read suitable for any age, not just children. You will be full of admiration for the bravery of the brothers who lived through a time of great evil. Although the subject matter is harrowing, the story has been specially adapted for young readers and is a testament to love and the strength of the human spirit, as well as a warning to future generations.A story based on real-life. A narrative on harrowing events: The Holocaust. Fritz and Kurt is a story about a Jewish family, The Kleinman's, living in Austria during the 1930s; a time when their world was seemingly changed overnight and ripped apart. Hitler invaded, blaming Jewish people for the demise of Germany: they are sent to concentration camps or executed. Jewish residents are sought out, humiliated and bullied - once friends but now enemies. It is an incredibly moving book, with many harrowing details and scenes. Whilst not glossing over them, it doesn’t go into too much detail. It does highlight the many kindnesses that were shown to Fritz and Gustav during their time in various concentration camps, and this is a great positive to take from reading it. The author has painstakingly researched the family’s history and got to talk to Kurt about his story and life in America. Brothers Fritz and Kurt Kleinmann were fifteen and eight respectively when Nazi Germany invaded Austria. In a very short time, the life they had known in Vienna, the ‘before Hitler came’ in Kurt’s words, was destroyed. With so many of their Jewish neighbours, Fritz and his father were taken prisoner and transported to Nazi prison camps, first Buchenwald, then Auschwitz. The family managed to send two of their children abroad – Edith went to England, and Kurt to America, making the long, dangerous journey on his own aged just ten. The greater part of the book however describes what happened to Fritz and his papa, who managed to stay together, Fritz choosing to go with his father to Auschwitz even when he could have stayed in the relatively safer Buchenwald.

Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene Fritz and Kurt by Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene

Hello Yellow - 80 Books to Help Children Nurture Good Mental Health and Support With Anxiety and Wellbeing - I spent many hours interviewing Kurt, and we became friends. He told me all about their family life in Vienna in the days ‘before Hitler came’ and about his special childhood bond with Fritz. He also told me about his own story of life in Vienna under the Nazis, and how he escaped to America in 1941, all alone, aged only eleven. Jeremy Dronfield has re-written his book The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz for children. He has also added in further information that he found out after writing his first book, so Fritz and Kurt is an updated, simplified version. He has included explanations as footnotes of Jewish words and historical events to aid the reader. Although when my father’s diaries were published and then translated into English, that hit me very strongly, realising the many times they both nearly died.” Jeremy Dronfield has written a powerful tale that is horrifying and harrowing, probably more so to older readers who have knowledge of just what really happened. Jeremy Dronfield says just enough to tell the true story without giving young children nightmares with graphic details. My granddaughters are very sensitive but I am letting them read this book because they need to know what happened, as does all the next generation, in the hope that never again will the innocent be slaughtered in such a way. Unfortunately, we see that many do not learn the lessons from history.

Jeremy Dronfield Press Reviews

Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments It would be remiss not to mention the illustrations by David Ziggy Greene. “David carefully researched using reference photos and film footage.” One particular illustration Jeremy had “planned right from the beginning… Because if you just use the word Stormtrooper, kids are going to think of the Star Wars version.” Meaning David had to research exactly what they looked like, and then refine the details through further discussion. Jeremy embarked on a mission to write a different version. Readers of the original wanted to share the story with their children. A version written in a way children will be able to “relate to and understand”. But what is it we are asking children to understand when it comes to the Holocaust? This story is “about children”, and Jeremy mentions that a child’s experience is often overlooked. Other books might only give a “small narrow window” into their lives in the Holocaust. In Fritz and Kurt, we have the experiences of a concentration camp and being a refugee. These can provide the reader with a “deeper and broader insight into what children experienced”. Jeremy would like children to understand that because “it’s so beyond what children can imagine from their own experience”. And not just how it happened but why it happened too. Mauthausen was the destination towards which father and son were going when Gustav persuaded his son to leap from a speeding train of starving men and corpses, out into a snowdrift. If there are moments when Dronfield’s extraordinary book sounds more like a peculiarly gruesome thriller, readers should remind themselves that none of this is fiction. These horrors happened. Witnesses such as Gustav and Fritz survived and told their tales to ensure that their past should never be repeated. The rest is up to us.