In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called "butcher of Riga," Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg:

"After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: 'These are our laws--let them prevail!'"

Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed "facts" about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors--the last legal witnesses--were dying.

Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved.

Author: Linda Kinstler
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 08/23/2022
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.41h x 6.30w x 1.15d
ISBN: 9781541702592


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 05/16/2022
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2022
Library Journal 08/01/2022 pg. 109
Choice 06/01/2023

About the Author
Linda Kinstler is a contributing writer for The Economist's 1843 Magazine and a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric Department at UC Berkeley. The 2023 Whiting Award recipient for Nonfiction, her writing appears in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Wired, and elsewhere. She was previously a Marshall Scholar in the UK, where she covered British politics for the Atlantic and studied with Forensic Architecture.