Franci's War
A Woman's Story of Survival
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
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Helen Epstein
About this listen
The engrossing memoir of a spirited and glamorous young fashion designer who survived World War ll, with an afterword by her daughter, Helen Epstein.
In the summer of 1942, 22-year-old Franci Rabinek - designated a Jew by the Nazi racial laws - arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto 40 miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labor camps in Hamburg, and Bergen Belsen. After liberation by the British in April 1945, she finally returned to Prague.
Franci was known in her group as the Prague dress designer who lied to Dr. Mengele at an Auschwitz selection, saying she was an electrician, an occupation that both endangered and saved her life. In this memoir, she offers her intense, candid, and sometimes funny account of those dark years, with the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends.
Franci's War is the powerful testimony of one incredibly strong young woman who endured the horrors of the Holocaust and survived.
©2020 Franci Rabinek Epstein (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"[A] striking memoir...useful testimony from an unspeakably terrifying era." (Kirkus)
"A searingly honest memoir." (Booklist, starred review)
"What are the qualities of a heroine tested and shaped by history, not by myth? She must have unflinching intelligence, wit, will, and honesty in the face of near-unbearable trials. Franci Rabinek Epstein was a worldly, pleasure-loving dress designer when the Nazi’s invaded Prague; she endured and prevailed when they sent her to Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Her voice is riveting whether she's outwitting Josef Mengele, grappling with her own despair, discussing Dostoevsky with another prisoner, delousing her hair with kerosene or improvising a Cocteau monologue for a show the women inmates stage with canny defiance. She survived the worst of her times; she speaks to the best of ours." (Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Negroland: A Memoir)
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- A Remarkable Story of Survival and Courage in Auschwitz
- By: Magda Hellinger, Maya Lee, David Brewster
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton, Zoe Carides
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In March 1942, 25-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS.
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Extraordinary courage.
- By Alice@Wonderland on 10-01-24
By: Magda Hellinger, and others
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On the Run in Nazi Berlin
- A Memoir
- By: Bert Lewyn, Bev Saltzman Lewyn - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Berlin, 1942. The Gestapo arrest 18-year-old Bert Lewyn and his parents, sending the latter to their deaths and Bert to work in a factory making guns for the Nazi war effort. Miraculously tipped off the morning the Gestapo round up all the Jews who work in the factories, Bert goes underground. He finds shelter sometimes with compassionate civilians, sometimes with people who find his skills useful and sometimes in the cellars of bombed-out buildings.
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NOT YOUR USUAL STORY ABOUT THE NAZIS...FANTASTIC!
- By Steve on 03-21-19
By: Bert Lewyn, and others
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My Friend Anne Frank
- The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds
- By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, Dina Kraft
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever.
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the missing piece to Anne’s story and the complete picture of Hannah’s
- By Wilson on 07-13-23
By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, and others
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The Light of Days
- The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
- By: Judy Batalion
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters - a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.
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A profoundly moving book
- By Brian R Smith on 04-18-21
By: Judy Batalion
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Last Stop Auschwitz
- My Story of Survival from Within the Camp
- By: Eddy de Wind
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in the camp itself in the weeks following the Red Army's liberation of the camp, Last Stop Auschwitz is the raw, true account of Eddy's experiences at Auschwitz. In stunningly poetic prose, he provides unparalleled access to the horrors he faced in the concentration camp. This poignant memoir is at once a moving love story, a detailed portrayal of the atrocities of Auschwitz, and an intelligent consideration of the kind of behavior - both good and evil - people are capable of.
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wow
- By Ann on 02-08-20
By: Eddy de Wind
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The Wall
- By: John Hersey
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 29 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of 40 men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty - a gripping and visceral story, impossible to pause.
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Fascinating
- By Phil on 06-14-21
By: John Hersey
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The Sisters of Auschwitz
- The True Story of Two Jewish Sisters’ Resistance in the Heart of Nazi Territory
- By: Roxane van Iperen
- Narrated by: Susan Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The unforgettable story of two unsung heroes of World War II: sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper who joined the Dutch Resistance, helped save dozen of lives, were captured by the Nazis, and ultimately survived the Holocaust.
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A Miss
- By FritzFamily on 10-06-21
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The Watchmaker's Daughter
- The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The Watchmaker’s Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that listeners haven’t heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom—a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.
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Good effort!
- By Michele on 03-07-23
By: Larry Loftis
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A Train Near Magdeburg
- A Teacher's Journey into the Holocaust
- By: Matthew Rozell
- Narrated by: Nick Cracknell
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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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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Five Chimneys
- A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz
- By: Olga Lengyel
- Narrated by: Jennifer Wydra
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This true, documented chronicle is the intimate, day-to-day record of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare of Auschwitz and Birchenau. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization.
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Five Chimneys
- By Grannie Annie on 04-03-19
By: Olga Lengyel
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The Happiest Man on Earth
- The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor
- By: Eddie Jaku
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. Every day of the next seven years of his life, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and finally on a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days.
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Everyone needs to listen to this amazing man
- By Christan Derryberry on 05-12-21
By: Eddie Jaku
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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Into the Forest
- A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love
- By: Rebecca Frankel
- Narrated by: Natalie Pela
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy, where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States.
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Great story with an added benefit
- By Scottsville Stu on 12-30-21
By: Rebecca Frankel
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The Girl in the Green Sweater
- A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow
- By: Krystyna Chiger, Daniel Paisner - contributor
- Narrated by: Romy Nordlinger
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing, and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the 14 months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.
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Excellent writing. And a wonderful story!
- By Justin Aaron on 05-03-24
By: Krystyna Chiger, and others
What listeners say about Franci's War
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 03-19-24
very good account of actual Holocaust survivorship
great read, more people need to hear this story, thank you for sharing it with us
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