'A tremendous feat of storytelling propelled by numerous twists and revelations yet anchored
by a deep moral seriousness . . . Enthralling' Guardian 'Part detective story part family
history part probing inquiry into how best to reckon with the horrors of a previous century
Come to This Court and Cry is bracingly original beautifully written and haunting. An
astonishing book' Patrick Radden Keefe author of Empire of Pain To probe the past is to submit
the memory of one's ancestors to a certain kind of trial. In this case the trial came to me. A
few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead - a former Nazi who
belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather - was the subject of an ongoing criminal
investigation in Latvia. The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes. They put on the line
hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors - the
last legal witnesses - were dying. Across the world Second World War-era cases are winding
their way through the courts. Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of
a century and still judges ask for proof. Where do these stories end? What responsibilities
attend their transmission so many generations on? How many ghosts need to be put on trial for
us to consider the crime scene of history closed? In this major non-fiction debut Linda
Kinstler investigates both her family story and the archives of ten nations to examine what it
takes to prove history in our uncertain century. Probing and profound Come to this Court and
Cry is about the nature of memory and justice when revisionism ultra-nationalism and denialism
make it feel like history is slipping out from under our feet. It asks how the stories we tell
about ourselves our families and our nations are passed down how we alter them and what they
demand of us. 'Kinstler reminds us of the dangerous instability of truth and testimony and the
urgent need in the twenty-first century to keep telling the history of the twentieth' Anne
Applebaum 'A masterpiece' Peter Pomerantsev
