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A Light in the Darkness
- Janusz Korczak, His Orphans, and the Holocaust
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
From National Book Award Finalist Albert Marrin comes the moving story of Janusz Korczak, the heroic Polish Jewish doctor who devoted his life to children, perishing with them in the Holocaust.
Janusz Korczak was more than a good doctor. He was a hero. The Dr. Spock of his day, he established orphanages run on his principle of honoring children and shared his ideas with the public in books and on the radio. He famously said that "children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today". Korczak was a man ahead of his time, whose work ultimately became the basis for the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
Korczak was also a Polish Jew on the eve of World War II. He turned down multiple opportunities for escape, standing by the children in his orphanage as they became confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. Dressing them in their Sabbath finest, he led their march to the trains and ultimately perished with his children in Treblinka.
But this book is much more than a biography. In it, renowned nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines not just Janusz Korczak's life but his ideology of children: that children are valuable in and of themselves, as individuals. He contrasts this with Adolf Hitler's life and his ideology of children: that children are nothing more than tools of the state.
And throughout, Marrin draws listeners into the Warsaw Ghetto. What it was like. How it was run. How Jews within and Poles without responded. Who worked to save lives and who tried to enrich themselves on other people's suffering. And how one man came to represent the conscience and the soul of humanity.
This is an unforgettable portrait of a man whose compassion in even the darkest hours reminds us what is possible.
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From the author of The Things Our Fathers Saw in the World War II eyewitness history series comes this book, offering the true story behind an iconic photograph taken at the liberation of a death train, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. It's brought to life by the history teacher who discovered it and went on to reunite hundreds of Holocaust survivors with the actual American soldiers who saved them.
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important story
- By Amazon Customer on 04-04-20
By: Matthew Rozell
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The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1
- An Experiment in Literary Investigation
- By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 25 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.
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Should be required reading in US schools
- By Richard on 01-01-21
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Say Nothing
- A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Matthew Blaney
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
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On a par with I'll Be Gone in the Dark, plus...
- By Grace O'Malley on 03-01-19
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The Escape Artist
- The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
- By: Jonathan Freedland
- Narrated by: Jonathan Freedland
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Good
- By Matt on 11-10-22
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Judgment Before Nuremberg
- The Holocaust in the Ukraine and the First Nazi War Crimes Trial
- By: Greg Dawson
- Narrated by: Gary Dikeos
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When people think of the Holocaust, they think of Auschwitz, of Dachau; and when they think of justice for this terrible chapter in history, they think of Nuremberg. Not of Russia or the Ukraine, and certainly not a town called Kharkov. But in reality, the first war-crimes trial against the Nazis was in this idyllic, peaceful Ukrainian city, which is fitting, because it is also where the Holocaust actually began.
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Don’t Insult Your Audience
- By Michael Richards on 01-21-22
By: Greg Dawson
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The Nazis
- A Warning from History
- By: Laurence Rees
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the success of Rees's best-selling Auschwitz, this substantially revised and updated edition of The Nazis - A Warning from History tells the powerfully gripping story of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. During a 16-year period, acclaimed author and documentary-maker Laurence Rees met and interviewed a large number of former Nazis, and his unique insights into the Nazi psyche and World War II received enormous praise.
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HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY
- By Bowen Florsheim on 09-14-21
By: Laurence Rees
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Children of Nazis
- The Sons and Daughters of Himmler, Göring, Höss, Mengele, and Others - Living with a Father’s Monstrous Legacy
- By: Tania Crasnianski, Molly Grogan - translator
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1940, the German sons and daughters of infamous Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring, Hess, Frank, Bormann, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at four, five, or 10 years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents. Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they eventually discovered the extent of their fathers' occupations: These men were leaders of the Third Reich and would later be convicted as monstrous war criminals.
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Fantastic
- By Anonymous User on 12-30-22
By: Tania Crasnianski, and others
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The Shining Path
- Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes
- By: Orin Starn, Miguel La Serna
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 17, 1980, on the eve of Peru's presidential election, five masked men stormed a small town. They set election ballots ablaze and vanished, but not before planting a red hammer-and-sickle banner in the town square. The lone man arrested the next morning later swore allegiance to a group called Shining Path. Described by a US State Department cable as "cold-blooded and bestial", Shining Path orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and massacres across the cities, countryside, and jungles of Peru in a murderous campaign to seize power and impose a Communist government.
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Understanding my wife
- By Eugene on 06-10-22
By: Orin Starn, and others
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Witness to Nuremberg
- The Many Lives of the Man Who Translated at the Nazi War Trials
- By: W. Richard Sonnenfeldt
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. By age 22 he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
During his service, he spent pretrial time with Hermann Göering as well as other top Nazi leaders.
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So much more than expected
- By Kathy on 03-23-12
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What listeners say about A Light in the Darkness
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ryan K.
- 04-03-22
Emotionally Heavy Read, Necessary Reminder
Marrin delivers living history through facts, quotes from diaries, war-time poems, and vivid imagery of how inhumanely the Nazis treated the Polish Jews, focusing on the Warsaw Ghetto. He writes history in a very accessible way that sticks with the reader.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Polar Bear
- 07-06-24
Misleading Title Not About Janusz Korczak
"A Light in the Darkness: Janusz Korczak, His Orphans, and the Holocaust" was disappointing as this book isn't really about Janusz Korczak. It is not a biography of the courageous Jewish doctor that took in orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto. And most notably known for going to his death along with his orphans at Triblinka. I would have liked to learn more of this courageous man but this book is a condensed history of the Holocaust in Poland during WWII. If you've done considerable research on the Holocaust, then you learn nothing new and you learn very little of Janusz Korczak. I think his name in the title was used for marketing because maybe 10% but probably less is about Korczak. Very disappointing.
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