Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends

Journalist Kinstler debuts with a captivating investigation into “how the memory of the Holocaust extends into the present and acts upon it.” After the Nazis invaded Latvia in 1941, Kinstler’s paternal grandfather, Boris Kinstler, joined the Arajs Kommando, a Latvian police unit tasked with ridding the region of communists and Jews. In 1949, Boris disappeared from Latvia and was reported dead by Soviet authorities, fueling rumors that he’d been a KGB agent “charged with killing Latvian partisans.” Interwoven with Boris’s story is that of Herberts Cukurs, a famed Latvian aviator who also joined the Arajs Kommandos and was accused by eyewitnesses of participating in the Rumbula massacre. After escaping Allied authorities and settling in Brazil, Cukurs was assassinated by Mossad agents in 1965. Forty years later, the Latvian government opened an investigation into Cukurs that concluded there was “no evidence” he had taken part in “acts that qualify as genocide.” Though the links between Boris and Cukurs—which were first suggested to the author by a “cheap” Latvian spy novel that claims her grandfather was responsible for Cukurs’s fate—feel somewhat tenuous, Kinstler lucidly analyses the legal, cultural, and political matters involved. The result is a fascinating and often troubling account of how the past haunts the present. (Aug.)