The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz: A True Story of Family and Survival

“Brilliantly written, vivid, a powerful and often uncomfortable true story that deserves to be read and remembered. It beautifully captures the strength of the bond between a father and son.”―Heather Morris, author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller―a remarkable work of World War II nonfiction about the heroic and unbreakable bond between a father and son that is as inspirational as T he Tattooist of Auschwitz and as mesmerizing as The Choice.

Where there is family, there is hope

In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholster from Vienna, and his sixteen-year-old son Fritz are arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Germany. Imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, they miraculously survive the Nazis’ murderous brutality.

Then Gustav learns he is being sent to Auschwitz―and certain death.

For Fritz, letting his father go is unthinkable. Desperate to remain together, Fritz makes an incredible choice: he insists he must go too. To the Nazis, one death camp is the same as another, and so the boy is allowed to follow.

Throughout the six years of horror they witness and immeasurable suffering they endure as victims of the camps, one constant keeps them alive: their love and hope for the future.

This unforgettable Holocaust true story, based on the secret diary that Gustav kept as well as meticulous archival research and interviews with members of the Kleinmann family, including Fritz’s younger brother Kurt, sent to the United States at age eleven to escape the war, The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is Gustav and Fritz’s story―an extraordinary and inspirational story of courage, loyalty, survival, and love that is unforgettable.

But how does a father keep his son from despair, and how does a son keep his father from death, in the most terrifying place on Earth?

Father and Son Survival Story: Follows Gustav and Fritz Kleinmann, a Viennese upholsterer and his teenage son, through six years of horror in Nazi concentration camps from Buchenwald to Auschwitz. An Unbreakable Bond: When Gustav is sent to certain death at Auschwitz, Fritz makes an unthinkable choice: to go with him, refusing to let his father die alone. Based on a Secret Diary: Drawn from the hidden journal Gustav kept throughout his imprisonment, this is a raw, immediate, and unforgettable first-hand account of the Holocaust. Against All Odds: Witness the acts of resistance, moments of kindness, and the sheer force of will that kept a father and son together from their arrest in 1939 to their final liberation.