Jerusalem Report logo small (credit: JPOST STAFF)
Jerusalem Report logo small (credit: JPOST STAFF)
Come to This Court & Cry: How the Holocaust Ends is a book with ostensibly excellent potential. For starters, the author has a highly unusual family history. Her paternal grandfather was a member of one of the worst murder squads in the history of the Holocaust, the Latvian Arajs Kommando, whose men murdered tens of thousands of Latvian and Belarusian Jews, and her maternal grandparents were Soviet Jews, many of whose family members were murdered in the Holocaust in Ukraine. And if that is not a strange enough family constellation, her story is further complicated by her Arajs Kommando grandfather switching sides at some point and becoming an informer for the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police), who identified his former comrades to the Soviet authorities, so that they could be prosecuted.

If, however, one is looking with anticipation to read about the obviously problematic interaction between relatives from such diverse backgrounds, they will be deeply disappointed. The author writes sparingly about her Jewish mother and her family, about whose survival in the Holocaust we learn virtually nothing.

The focus of the book: Arjas Kommando

It is her Arajs Kommando grandfather, Boris Kinstler, who is the primary subject of her investigation and fascination. The problem in his case, however, is that there is insufficient evidence of any sort to be able to fully verify his role in the Kommando, exactly when he became a spy for the Soviets, as well as his suspicious disappearance in 1949 in the course of a “routine business trip” to Estonia.
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