
Irena's Gift
An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival
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Narrated by:
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Karen Kirsten
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By:
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Karen Kirsten
About this listen
In 1942, in German-occupied Poland, a Jewish baby girl was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That baby, Joasia, knew nothing about this extraordinary event until she was thirty-two, when a letter arrived from a stranger. She also learned that the parents who raised her were actually her aunt and uncle. Joasia kept this knowledge hidden from her own daughter, Karen—until an innocent question unexpectedly revealed the truth.
Determined to understand the generational trauma that cloaked her family in silence, her own origins, and to help heal her mother's pain, Karen set out to unearth decades of secrets and piece together a hidden history—from the glittering days of pre-war Poland to the little-known Radom Prison, where of 500 resistance members tortured, only ten survived, her grandfather the only known Jewish one. There, Karen finds answers, yet not easy ones.
As she exposes her family's saga of love and betrayal, countless brushes with death, precarious hiding places, and the astounding negotiation with an SS officer who saved her mother's life, Karen must reconcile the complicated, multi-faceted truths behind human behavior.
©2023 Karen Kirsten (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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1944: Heavy footfalls thud on the road on a rainy May night. A band of gunmen scour a hilltop farm, acting on rumors that it harbors a Jewish family. For 18 months, the Rozeneks have been hiding safely, but their luck is about to run out. Only one from the family of six will live to see the sunrise. Sixteen-year-old Hena Rozenek shelters in the woods until morning . . . and then she runs.
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-
-
Accuracy and detail of the Holocaust
- By Lisa Pollack on 03-25-25
By: Renee Salt, and others
-
Mistress of Life and Death
- The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau
- By: Susan J. Eischeid
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelee
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands. In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as "a nice girl from a good family," came to embody the very worst of humanity.
-
-
How we are all capable of evil
- By Michael V McKenney on 05-02-25
-
Inseparable
- The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey Through Bergen-Belsen to America
- By: Faris Cassell
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stefan and Marion Hess’s happy childhood was shattered in 1944. Torn from their home in Amsterdam, the six-year-old twins and their parents were deported to a place their mother called “a dying hell”—the infamous concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Inseparable is the vivid account of one family’s struggle to survive the Holocaust.
-
-
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- By Michael on 01-15-24
By: Faris Cassell
-
Lily's Promise
- Holding On to Hope Through Auschwitz and Beyond—A Story for All Generations
- By: Lily Ebert, Dov Forman
- Narrated by: Charles HRH The Prince of Wales, Lily Ebert, Dov Forman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
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-
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-
Performance
-
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-
The Survivor
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- By: Josef Lewkowicz
- Narrated by: Price Waldman
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Nazi forces entered Kraków, Poland in 1939, unexpected and unresisted, Josef Lewkowicz's life became a nightmare overnight as he and his family were rounded up and sent to concentration camps across German-occupied territory. It wasn't long before Josef found himself face-to-face with SS kommandant Amon Goeth, whose brutality was made infamous by the film Schindler's List. As Josef struggled to survive the violence, horror, and degradations of one prison camp after another—he was kept alive only by his faith and his profound sense of justice.
-
-
Amazing book and great narration!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-24-25
By: Josef Lewkowicz
4 generations of survival
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Incredible memoir of family, secrets and survival
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the book jumped around
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