28 Best Holocaust, History Books
Holocaust, History is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Holocaust, History audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 28 Holocaust, History audiobooks below.
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- By: Tova Friedman
- Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Harlequin Audio
- Publish date: September 06, 2022
- Language: English
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4.55(1588 ratings)
4.55(1588 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USD*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR BEN KINGSLEY A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR BEN KINGSLEY
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
“I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor’s obligation to represent one and a half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.”
Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau.
During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale.
As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova’s father tracked them down and the family was reunited.
In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it’s in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant’s meticulous research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova’s extraordinary story about the world’s worst ever crime.
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The Escape Artist
- By: Jonathan Freedland
- Narrator: Jonathan Freedland
- Length: 11 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 18, 2022
- Language: English
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4.5(2538 ratings)
4.5(2538 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USD“A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information—and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?” — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of“A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information—and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?” — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . .
Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear.
In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom–among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world–and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen–a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope.
And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more.
This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man–a gifted “escape artist” who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.
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House of Glass
- By: Hadley Freeman
- Narrator: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 10 hours 15 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.42(2328 ratings)
4.42(2328 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDWriter Hadley Freeman investigates her family’s secret history in this “exceptional” (The Washington Post) “masterpiece” (The Daily Telegraph) uncovering a story that spans a century, two World Wars, and threeWriter Hadley Freeman investigates her family’s secret history in this “exceptional” (The Washington Post) “masterpiece” (The Daily Telegraph) uncovering a story that spans a century, two World Wars, and three generations.
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Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother Sara lived in France just as Hitler started to gain power, but rarely did anyone in her family talk about it. Long after her grandmother’s death, she found a shoebox tucked in the closet containing photographs of her grandmother with a mysterious stranger, a cryptic telegram from the Red Cross, and a drawing signed by Picasso.
This discovery sent Freeman on a decade-long quest to uncover the significance of these keepsakes, taking her from Picasso’s archives in Paris to a secret room in a farmhouse in Auvergne to Long Island to Auschwitz. Freeman pieces together the puzzle of her family’s past, discovering more about the lives of her grandmother and her three brothers, Jacques, Henri, and Alex. Their stories sometimes typical, sometimes astonishing–reveal the broad range of experiences of Eastern European Jews during the Holocaust.
This “frightening, inspiring, and cautionary” (Kirkus Reviews) family saga is filled with extraordinary twists, vivid characters, and famous cameos, illuminating the Jewish and immigrant experience in the World War II era. Reviewers have asked: “is there a better book about being Jewish?” (The Daily Telegraph) Addressing themes of assimilation, identity, and home, House of Glass is “a triumph” (The Bookseller) and a powerful story about the past that echoes issues that remain relevant today. -
Bloodlands
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrator: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 19 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 02, 2018
- Language: English
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4.36(11527 ratings)
4.36(11527 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDFrom the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century.Americans callFrom the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century.... Read more
Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.”But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens–and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries. -
When Time Stopped
- By: Ariana Neumann
- Narrator: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 20 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.35(4041 ratings)
4.35(4041 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDIn this astonishing story that “reads like a thriller and is so, so timely” (BuzzFeed) Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: “Like Anne Frank’s diary, it offers a story that needs to be told andIn this astonishing story that “reads like a thriller and is so, so timely” (BuzzFeed) Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: “Like Anne Frank’s diary, it offers a story that needs to be told and heard” (Booklist, starred review).
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In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews. He was transported to Auschwitz. Eighteen days later his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book.
Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo’s eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened.
When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. Ten years later Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined.
A “beautifully told story of personal discovery” (John le Carre), When Time Stopped is an unputdownable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life, and this “gripping, expertly researched narrative will inspire those looking to uncover their own family histories” (Publishers Weekly). -
Those Who Forget
- By: Geraldine Schwarz
- Narrator: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hours 30 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.31(314 ratings)
4.31(314 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USD“[Makes] the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be.” —The New Yorker “Riveting…we can never be reminded too often“[Makes] the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be.” —The New Yorker
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“Riveting…we can never be reminded too often to never forget.” —The Wall Street Journal
Journalist Geraldine Schwarz’s astonishing memoir of her German and French grandparents’ lives during World War II “also serves as a perceptive look at the current rise of far-right nationalism throughout Europe and the US” (Publishers Weekly).
During World War II, Geraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaufer–those who followed the current. Once the war ended, they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage of the Third Reich.
Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her paternal grandfather Karl took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. She finds letters from the only survivor of this family (all the others perished in Auschwitz), demanding reparations. But Karl Schwarz refused to acknowledge his responsibility. Geraldine starts to question the past: How guilty were her grandparents? What makes us complicit? On her mother’s side, she investigates the role of her French grandfather, a policeman in Vichy.
Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology, overcome by a fog of denial after the war, and, in Germany at least, eventually managed to transform collective guilt into democratic responsibility. She asks: How can nations learn from history? And she observes that countries that avoid confronting the past are especially vulnerable to extremism. Searing and unforgettable, Those Who Forget “deserves to be read and discussed widely…this is Schwarz’s invaluable warning” (The Washington Post Book Review). -
The Children of Willesden Lane
- By: Mona Golabek
- Narrator: Mona Golabek
- Length: 8 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 15, 2016
- Language: English
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4.26(2131 ratings)
4.26(2131 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.98 USDBased on the true story of her mother, Mona Golabek describes the inspirational story of Lisa Jura’s escape from Nazi-controlled Austria to England on the famed Kindertransport. Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna.Based on the true story of her mother, Mona Golabek describes the inspirational story of Lisa Jura’s escape from Nazi-controlled Austria to England on the famed Kindertransport.
Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna. But when the Nazis start closing in on the city, life changes irreversibly. Although he has three daughters, Lisa’s father is only able to secure one berth on the Kindertransport. The family decides to send Lisa to London so that she may pursue her dreams of a career as a concert pianist. Separated from her beloved family, Lisa bravely endures the trip and a disastrous posting outside London before finding her way to the Willesden Lane Orphanage.... Read moreIt is in this orphanage that Lisa’s story truly comes to life. Her music inspires the other orphanage children, and they, in turn, cheer her on in her efforts to make good on her promise to her family to realize her musical potential. Through hard work and sheer pluck, Lisa wins a scholarship to study piano at the Royal Academy. As she supports herself and studies, she makes a new life for herself and dreams of reconnecting with the family she was forced to leave behind. The resulting tale delivers a message of the power of music to uplift the human spirit and to grant the individual soul endurance, patience, and peace.
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Poland 1939
- By: Roger Moorhouse
- Narrator: Roger Moorhouse
- Length: 12 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: July 14, 2020
- Language: English
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4.24(177 ratings)
4.24(177 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDA “chilling” and “expertly” written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London).For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but forA “chilling” and “expertly” written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London).For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler’s soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin’s Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.In Poland 1939, Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the conflict to come.... Read more -
Lily’s Promise
- By: Lily Ebert
- Narrator: Charles HRH The Prince of Wales
- Length: 8 hours 54 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: May 10, 2022
- Language: English
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4.22(9 ratings)
4.22(9 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDPerformed by Anna Cordell and Dov Forman featuring a foreword written and read by Charles HRH The Prince of Wales and dedication written and read by Lily Ebert. “Utterly compelling, heartbreaking, truthful and yet redemptive . . . a testimonyPerformed by Anna Cordell and Dov Forman featuring a foreword written and read by Charles HRH The Prince of Wales and dedication written and read by Lily Ebert.
“Utterly compelling, heartbreaking, truthful and yet redemptive . . . a testimony of irrepressible spirit and an unforgettable family chronicle. I couldn’t stop reading it.”–Simon Sebag Montefiore
In this life-affirming intergenerational memoir, Lily Ebert, a Holocaust survivor, and her great-grandson, Dov Forman, come together to share her story–an unforgettable tale of resilience and resistance.
On Yom Kippur, 1944, fighting to stay alive as a prisoner in Auschwitz, Lily Ebert made a promise to herself. She would survive the hell she was in and tell the world her story, for everyone who couldn’t. Now, at ninety-eight, this remarkable woman–and TikTok sensation, thanks to the help of her eighteen-year-old great-grandson–fulfills that vow, relaying the details of her harrowing experiences with candor, charm, and an overflowing heart.
In these pages, she writes movingly about her happy childhood in Hungary, the death of her mother and two youngest siblings on their arrival at Auschwitz, and her determination to keep her two other sisters safe. She describes the inhumanity of the camp and the small acts of defiance that gave her strength. Lily lost so much, but she built a new life for herself and her family, first in Israel and then in London.
Dov knows that it is up to younger people like him to keep Lily’s promise. He and Lily bridge the generation gap to share her experience, reminding us of the joy that accompanies the solemn responsibility of keeping the past–and our stories–alive.
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The Unanswered Letter
- By: Faris Cassell
- Narrator: Kate Mulligan
- Length: 15 hours 31 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.21(642 ratings)
4.21(642 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDDear Madam—You are surely informed about the situation of all Jews in Central Europe and this letter will not astonish you. In August 1939, just days before World War II broke out in Europe, a Jewish man in Vienna named Alfred Berger mailed aDear Madam—You are surely informed about the situation of all Jews in Central Europe and this letter will not astonish you.
In August 1939, just days before World War II broke out in Europe, a Jewish man in Vienna named Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to a stranger in America who shared his last name.
By pure chance I got your address … I beg you instantly to send for me and my wife …
Decades later, journalist Faris Cassell stumbled upon the stunning letter and became determined to uncover the story behind it. How did the American Bergers respond? Did Alfred and his family escape Nazi Germany? Over a decade-long investigation, Cassell traveled thousands of miles; explored archives and offices in Austria, Belarus, Israel, and the Czech Republic; interviewed descendants; and found letters, photos, and sketches made by family members during the Holocaust.
This is Cassell’s account of the devastating true story of The Unanswered Letter.
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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
- By: William L. Shirer
- Narrator: Grover Gardner
- Length: 57 hours 11 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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4.19(115889 ratings)
4.19(115889 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0039.95 USDSince its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century’s blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offersSince its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century’s blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic.
Now, years after the end of World War II, it may seem incredible that our most valued institutions, and way of life, were threatened by the menace that Hitler and the Third Reich represented. Shirer’s description of events and the cast of characters who played such pivotal roles in defining the course Europe was to take is unforgettable.
Benefiting from his many years as a reporter, and thus a personal observer of the rise of Nazi Germany, and availing himself of some of the 485 tons of documents from the German Foreign Office, as well as countless other diaries, phone transcriptions, and other written records meticulously kept at every level by the Germans, Shirer has put together a brutally objective account of how Hitler wrested political control of Germany, and planned and executed his six-year quest to dominate the world, only to see Germany go down in flames.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a vast, richly rewarding experience for anyone who wants to come to grips with the mysterious question of how this menace to civilization ever came into being, much less was sustained for as long as it was. The answer, unfortunately, is that most of Germany, for a whole host of reasons, embraced Nazism and the fanaticism that Hitler engendered.
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Hell before Their Very Eyes
- By: John C. McManus
- Narrator: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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4.18(106 ratings)
4.18(106 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDOn April 4, 1945, United States Army units from the Eighty-Ninth Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps wereOn April 4, 1945, United States Army units from the Eighty-Ninth Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face-to-face with the monstrous reality of Hitler’s Germany.
These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity: railroad cars stacked with emaciated, lifeless bodies; ovens full of incinerated human remains; warehouses filled with stolen shoes, clothes, luggage, and even eyeglasses; prison yards littered with implements of torture and dead bodies; and–perhaps most disturbing of all–the half-dead survivors of the camps. For the American soldiers of all ranks who witnessed such powerful evidence of Nazi crimes, the experience was life altering. Almost all were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had seen, horrified that humans from ostensibly civilized societies were capable of such crimes.
Military historian John C. McManus sheds new light on this often-overlooked aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on a rich blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts–including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections–Hell before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.
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My Name Is Selma
- By: Selma van de Perre
- Narrator: Rachel Bavidge
- Length: 6 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.15(815 ratings)
4.15(815 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDAn international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor “shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness” (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and TheAn international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor “shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness” (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and The Gift).
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Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War II began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not been an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding–until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. In an act of defiance and with nowhere else to turn, Selma took on an assumed identity, dyed her hair blond, and joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years “Marga” risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as Aryan, she traveled around the country and even to Nazi headquarters in Paris, sharing information and delivering papers–doing, as she later explained, what “had to be done.”
In July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp as a political prisoner. Unlike her parents and sister who she later found out died in other camps–Selma survived by using her alias, pretending to be someone else. It was only after the war ended that she could reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma.
“We were ordinary people plunged into extraordinary circumstances,” she writes in this “astonishing, inspirational, and important” memoir (Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped). Full of hope and courage, this is Selma’s story in her own words. -
Hitler
- By: Brendan Simms
- Narrator: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 29 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.12(227 ratings)
4.12(227 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USDFrom a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph HitlerHitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator’s main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s,... Read moreFrom a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph HitlerHitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator’s main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary. The war against the Jews was driven both by his anxiety about combatting the supposed forces of international plutocracy and by a broader desire to maintain the domestic cohesion he thought necessary for survival on the international scene.A powerfully argued and utterly definitive account of a murderous tyrant we thought we understood, Hitler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of the Second World War. -
Alicia: My Story
- By: Alicia Appleman-Jurman
- Narrator: Gabrielle de Cuir
- Length: 17 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.11(83 ratings)
4.11(83 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDHere is a thrilling, uplifting story of true-life heroism unequaled since the publication of Anne Frank’s diary–a story that the young must hear and their elders must remember. Take Alicia’s hand–and follow. Her name isHere is a thrilling, uplifting story of true-life heroism unequaled since the publication of Anne Frank’s diary–a story that the young must hear and their elders must remember. Take Alicia’s hand–and follow.
Her name is Alicia. She was thirteen when she began saving the lives of people she did not know–while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland.
Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother’s brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child’s faith in human goodness–or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds.
After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine. She swore on her brother’s grave that if she survived, she would speak for her silenced family. This book is the eloquent fulfillment of that oath.
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Asylum
- By: Moriz Scheyer
- Narrator: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hours 54 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 27, 2016
- Language: English
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4.03(115 ratings)
4.03(115 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDA recently discovered account of an Austrian Jewish writer’s flight, persecution, and clandestine life in wartime France. As arts editor for one of Vienna’s principal newspapers, Moriz Scheyer knew many of the city’s foremostA recently discovered account of an Austrian Jewish writer’s flight, persecution, and clandestine life in wartime France.... Read moreAs arts editor for one of Vienna’s principal newspapers, Moriz Scheyer knew many of the city’s foremost artists, and was an important literary journalist. With the advent of the Nazis he was forced from both job and home. In 1943, in hiding in France, Scheyer began drafting what was to become this book.
Tracing events from the Anschluss in Vienna, through life in Paris and unoccupied France, including a period in a French concentration camp, contact with the Resistance, and clandestine life in a convent caring for mentally disabled women, he gives an extraordinarily vivid account of the events and experience of persecution.
After Scheyer’s death in 1949, his stepson, disliking the book’s anti-German rhetoric, destroyed the manuscript. Or thought he did. Recently, a carbon copy was found in the family’s attic by P.N. Singer, Scheyer’s step-grandson, who has translated and provided an epilogue.
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The Lost
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4.02(5399 ratings)
4.02(5399 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDIn this rich and riveting narrative, a writer’s search for the truth behind his family’s tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic–part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detectiveIn this rich and riveting narrative, a writer’s search for the truth behind his family’s tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic–part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work–that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust–an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives’ fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family’s story began and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.
Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.
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Nazi Terror
- By: Eric A. Johnson
- Narrator: Edward Lewis
- Length: 17 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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3.99(913 ratings)
3.99(913 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.95 USDWho were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables whileWho were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables while they were happening? Exactly how was Nazi terror applied in the daily lives of ordinary Jews and Germans? Eric A. Johnson answers these questions as he explores the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.
Based on years of research in Gestapo archives as well as extensive interviews with perpetrators and victims, Nazi Terror settles many nagging questions about who was responsible for what, who knew what, and when they knew it. It is the most fine-grained portrait we may ever have of the mechanism of terror in a dictatorship.
Destined to become the classic study of terror in the Nazi dictatorship, and the benchmark for the next generation of Nazi and Holocaust scholarship, Nazi Terror tackles the central aspect of the Nazi dictatorship head on by focusing on the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.
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1924
- By: Peter Ross Range
- Narrator: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 9 hours 0 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: January 26, 2016
- Language: English
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3.97(669 ratings)
3.97(669 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe dark story of Adolf Hitler’s life in 1924 — the year that made a monster. Before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler’s final transformation into the self-proclaimed saviorThe dark story of Adolf Hitler’s life in 1924 — the year that made a monster.... Read moreBefore Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler’s final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany’s historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich.
Everything that would come — the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea — all of it crystallized in one defining year. 1924 was the year that Hitler spent locked away from society, in prison and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It was a year of deep reading and intensive writing, a year of courtroom speeches and a treason trial, a year of slowly walking gravel paths and spouting ideology while working feverishly on the book that became his manifesto: Mein Kampf.
Until now, no one has fully examined this single and pivotal period of Hitler’s life. In 1924, Peter Ross Range richly depicts the stories and scenes of a year vital to understanding the man and the brutality he wrought in a war that changed the world forever.
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Defiance
- By: Nechama Tec
- Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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3.91(1526 ratings)
3.91(1526 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0020.95 USDThe prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims. But in fact, many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. This is the riveting history of one such group, a forest community numbering more thanThe prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims. But in fact, many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. This is the riveting history of one such group, a forest community numbering more than 1,200 Jews, that carried out the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Nechama Tec reconstructs the amazing details of how these men and women of all ages—hungry, largely unarmed, and exposed to harsh winter weather—managed not only to survive but to take on the duel role of fighters and rescuers. Under the guidance of their charismatic leader, Tuvia Bielski, they smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, led retaliatory raids against Nazi collaborators, and offered protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them.
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Four Girls From Berlin
- By: Marianne Meyerhoff
- Narrator: Jilly Bond
- Length: 8 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: July 14, 2020
- Language: English
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3.9(133 ratings)
3.9(133 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDA pair of silver Regency candlesticks. Pieces of well-worn family jewelry. More than a thousand documents, letters, and photographs. Lotte Meyerhoff’s best friends risked their lives in Nazi Germany to safeguard these and other treasuredA pair of silver Regency candlesticks. Pieces of well-worn family jewelry. More than a thousand documents, letters, and photographs. Lotte Meyerhoff’s best friends risked their lives in Nazi Germany to safeguard these and other treasured heirlooms and mementos from her family and return them to her after the war. The Holocaust had left Lotte the lone survivor of her family, and these precious objects gave her back a crucial piece of her past. Four Girls from Berlin vividly recreates that past and tells the story of Lotte and her courageous non-Jewish friends Ilonka, Erica, and Ursula as they lived under the shadow of Hitler in Berlin. Written by Lotte’s daughter, Marianne, this powerful memoir celebrates the unseverable bonds of friendship and a rich family legacy the Holocaust could not destroy.
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Overture of Hope
- By: Isabel Vincent
- Narrator: Liisa Ivary
- Length: 8 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.88(45 ratings)
3.88(45 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDA secret aria of courage and suspense Europe, 1937. Two British sisters: one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be famous romance novelist. One shared passion for opera. With war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of ContinentalA secret aria of courage and suspense
Europe, 1937. Two British sisters: one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be famous romance novelist. One shared passion for opera.
With war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the boot heel of the Nazis. What can two middle-aged British spinsters do about such matters? They can form a secret cabal right under Hitler’s nose and get to work saving lives. The sisters conspire to bring together worldwide opera aficionados and insiders in an international operation to rescue Jews in the opera from the horrific fate that everyone intuits is coming. By the time war does arrive, the Cooks and their operatives have plucked over two dozen Jewish men and women from the looming maw of the Holocaust and spirited them to safety in England.
Packed with original research and vividly told with suspense, hope, and wonder by award-winning New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent, this singular tale reveals many new details of the seemingly naive and oblivious Cook sisters’ surreptitious bravery, daring, and passionate commitment as the two mount a successful rescue mission that saves dozens of lives and preserves the opera they love for another generation.
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The Berlin Shadow
- By: Jonathan Lichtenstein
- Narrator: Jonathan Lichtenstein
- Length: 7 hours 15 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: December 15, 2020
- Language: English
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3.8(149 ratings)
3.8(149 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDA deeply moving memoir that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein’s father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport.A deeply moving memoir that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son.... Read more
In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein’s father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, upon arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture.
Growing up in post-war rural Wales where the conflict was never spoken of, Jonathan and his siblings were at a loss to understand their father’s relentless drive and sometimes eccentric behavior. As Hans enters old age, he and Jonathan set out to retrace his journey back to Berlin.
Written with tenderness and grace, The Berlin Shadow is a highly compelling story about time, trauma, family, and a father and son’s attempt to emerge from the shadows of history. -
Devil’s Diary
- By: Robert K. Wittman
- Narrator: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 15 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: March 29, 2016
- Language: English
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3.8(387 ratings)
3.8(387 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDThis exploration of the private wartime diary of Alfred Rosenberg–Hitler’s “chief philosopher” and architect of Nazi ideology–interweaves the story of its recent discovery with the revelation of itsThis exploration of the private wartime diary of Alfred Rosenberg–Hitler’s “chief philosopher” and architect of Nazi ideology–interweaves the story of its recent discovery with the revelation of its never-before-published contents, which are contextualized by the authors: The result is a unprecedented, page-turning narrative of the Nazi rise to power, the Holocaust, and Hitler’s post-invasion plans for Russia.
A groundbreaking historical contribution, The Devil’s Diary is a chilling window into the mind of Adolf Hitler’s “chief social philosopher,” Alfred Rosenberg, who formulated some of the guiding principles behind the Third Reich’s genocidal crusade. It also chronicles the thrilling detective hunt for the diary, which disappeared after the Nuremburg Trials and remained lost for almost three quarters of a century, until Robert Wittman, a former FBI special agent who founded the Bureau’s Art Crimes Team, played an important role and tells his story now for the first time.
The authors expertly and deftly contextualize more than 400 pages of entries stretching from 1936 through 1944, in which the loyal Hitler advisor recounts internal meetings with the Furher and his close associates Hermann Goring and Heinrich Himmler; describes the post-invasion occupation of the Soviet Union; considers the “solution” to the “Jewish question;” and discusses his overseeing of the mass seizure and cataloguing of books and artwork from homes, libraries, and museums across occupied Europe. An eyewitness to events, this narrative of Rosenberg’s diary offers provocative and intimate insights into pivotal moments in the war and the notorious Nazi who laid the philosophical foundations of the Third Reich.
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Underground in Berlin
- By: Marie Jalowicz Simon
- Narrator: Ellen Archer
- Length: 11 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 08, 2015
- Language: English
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3.78(1051 ratings)
3.78(1051 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDA thrilling piece of undiscovered history, this is the true account of a young Jewish woman who survived World War II in Berlin. In 1942, Marie Jalowicz, a twenty-year-old Jewish Berliner, made the extraordinary decision to do everything in herA thrilling piece of undiscovered history, this is the true account of a young Jewish woman who survived World War II in Berlin.... Read moreIn 1942, Marie Jalowicz, a twenty-year-old Jewish Berliner, made the extraordinary decision to do everything in her power to avoid the concentration camps. She removed her yellow star, took on an assumed identity, and disappeared into the city.
In the years that followed, Marie took shelter wherever it was offered, living with the strangest of bedfellows, from circus performers and committed communists to convinced Nazis. As Marie quickly learned, however, compassion and cruelty are very often two sides of the same coin.
Fifty years later, Marie agreed to tell her story for the first time. Told in her own voice with unflinching honesty, Underground in Berlin is a book like no other, of the surreal, sometimes absurd day-to-day life in wartime Berlin. This might be just one woman’s story, but it gives an unparalleled glimpse into what it truly means to be human.
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The Vanished Collection
- By: Pauline Baer De Perignon
- Narrator: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 5 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: January 11, 2022
- Language: English
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3.6(188 ratings)
3.6(188 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDIt all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn’t seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo, and more. PaulineIt all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn’t seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo, and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents’ elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.
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The Zookeeper’s Wife
- By: Diane Ackerman
- Narrator: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2007
- Language: English
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3.48(38704 ratings)
3.48(38704 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDThe New York Times bestseller now a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain.A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified byThe New York Times bestseller now a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain.A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history.
Drawing on Antonina’s diary and other historical sources, bestselling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina’s life as “the zookeeper’s wife,” responsible for her own family, the zoo animals, and their “guests”: resistance activists and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Jan led a cell of saboteurs, and the Zabinski’s young son risked his life carrying food to the guests, while also tending to an eccentric array of creatures in the house: pigs, hare, muskrat, foxes, and more. With hidden people having animal names and pet animals having human names, it’s a small wonder the zoo’s code name became “The House under a Crazy Star.” Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery, and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship of nature and its violation, as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet.
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Double Crossed
- By: Matthew Avery Sutton
- Narrator: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 12 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 24, 2019
- Language: English
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3.48(79 ratings)
3.48(79 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe untold story of the Christian missionaries who played a crucial role in the allied victory in World War II What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought “Wild” Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team ofThe untold story of the Christian missionaries who played a crucial role in the allied victory in World War II
What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought “Wild” Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team of religious activists for the Office of Strategic Services. They entered into a world of lies, deception, and murder, confident that their nefarious deeds would eventually help them expand the kingdom of God.In Double Crossed, historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spy-craft and faith in a world at war. Missionaries, priests, and rabbis, acutely aware of how their actions seemingly conflicted with their spiritual calling, carried out covert operations, bombings, and assassinations within the centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican, and Palestine. Working for eternal rewards rather than temporal spoils, these loyal secret soldiers proved willing to sacrifice and even to die for Franklin Roosevelt’s crusade for global freedom of religion. Chosen for their intelligence, powers of persuasion, and ability to seamlessly blend into different environments, Donovan’s recruits included people like John Birch, who led guerilla attacks against the Japanese, William Eddy, who laid the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa, and Stewart Herman, who dropped lone-wolf agents into Nazi Germany. After securing victory, those who survived helped establish the CIA, ensuring that religion continued to influence American foreign policy.Surprising and absorbing at every turn, Double Crossed is the untold story of World War II espionage and a profound account of the compromises and doubts that war forces on those who wage it.... Read more
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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