
Mistress of Life and Death
The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau
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Narrated by:
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Elisabeth Lagelee
About this listen
The first-ever biography of SS Overseer Maria Mandl, the highest-ranked woman in the Nazi killing machine and one of the few female perpetrators of the Holocaust.
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. Born in 1912 in the scenic Austrian village of Münzkirchen, Maria enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents—who later watched in anguish as their grown daughter rose through the Nazi system.
For two decades, Eischeid has excavated the details of Mandl's life story, drawing on archival testimonies, speaking to dozens of witnesses, and spending time with Mandl's community of friends and neighbors who shared their memories as well as those handed down in their families. The result is a chilling and complex exploration of how easily an ordinary citizen chose the path of evil in a climate of hate and fear.
©2024 Susan J. Eischeid (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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All the Horrors of War
- A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen
- By: Bernice Lerner
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On April 15, 1945, Brigadier H. L. Glyn Hughes entered Bergen-Belsen for the first time. Waiting for him were 10,000 unburied, putrefying corpses and 60,000 living prisoners, starving and sick. One month earlier, 15-year-old Rachel Genuth arrived at Bergen-Belsen; deported with her family from Sighet, Transylvania, in May of 1944, Rachel had by then already endured Auschwitz, the Christianstadt labor camp, and a forced march through the Sudetenland.
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Definitely must listen to
- By Misti on 08-10-23
By: Bernice Lerner
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The Master of Auschwitz:
- Memoirs of Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant SS
- By: Rudolf Hoess
- Narrated by: Tim Dalgleish
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first-hand account of the life, career, and the practices of horror at Auschwitz, written by Auschwitz Kommandant SS Rudolf Hoss as he awaited execution for his crimes. Including his psychological interviews at Nuremberg.
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The Banality of Evil…a Memoir
- By Tim on 03-16-17
By: Rudolf Hoess
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Empire of Destruction
- A History of Nazi Mass Killing
- By: Alex J. Kay
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Nazi Germany killed approximately 13 million civilians and other noncombatants in deliberate policies of mass murder, overwhelmingly during the war years. Almost half the victims were Jewish, systematically destroyed in the Holocaust, the core of the Nazis’ pan-European racial purification program. Alex Kay argues that the genocide of European Jewry can also be examined in the wider context of Nazi mass killing.
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Bleak, terrifying. Plumbs the depths
- By Dr Philip N Best on 11-22-22
By: Alex J. Kay
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Nazi Wives
- The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
- By: James Wyllie
- Narrated by: Dalya Raphael
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.
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Scary
- By Three River on 05-15-21
By: James Wyllie
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Sabina
- In the Eye of the Storm
- By: Bella Kuligowska Zucker
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the memoir written by Bella Kuligowska Zucker, the only person in her family to survive the Holocaust. In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. After loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. After finding the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany.
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Alone without family
- By Nancy F. on 04-17-25
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The Secret Holocaust Diaries
- The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister
- By: Nonna Bannister, Denise George, Carolyn Tomlin
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gallagher
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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For half a century, a terrible secret lay hidden, locked in a trunk in an attic... photos, official documents, and scraps of a diary written by a young girl. "The time has come when I must share my life story... some facts from the past that could make a contribution, however small it may be, to the history of mankind." The Secret Holocaust Diaries is a haunting eyewitness account of Nonna Lisowskaja Bannister, a remarkable Russian-American woman who saw and survived unspeakable evils as a young girl.
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I respect Nonna
- By Susan on 12-26-11
By: Nonna Bannister, and others
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
- By: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Very interesting and well told
- By Tracy F. on 03-31-23
By: Tova Friedman, and others
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The Hangman and His Wife
- The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich
- By: Nancy Dougherty, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 26 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague", with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second-in-command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac.
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Evil explained....NOT!
- By C. P. O. Carroll on 06-23-22
By: Nancy Dougherty, and others
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Beyond the Last Path
- A Buchenwald Survivor's Story
- By: Eugene Weinstock
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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This is the story of No. 22483, who had been shipped from Belgium to Buchenwald. It records what he saw and felt during his calvary from Antwerp to the Malin distribution camp in France and from there to the extermination camp of Buchenwald. He was one of the few people who both entered a Nazi concentration camp and left again. This is his remarkable personal story that records his experiences of one of the most harrowing events in human history.
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Is it a testimony, or a work of fiction?
- By Noa on 01-01-20
By: Eugene Weinstock
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The Long Night
- A True Story
- By: Ernst Israel Bornstein
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Long Night is Ernst Israel Bornstein's first-hand account of what he witnessed in seven concentration camps. Written with remarkable insight and raw emotion, The Long Night paints a portrait of human psychology in the darkest of times. Bornstein tells the stories of those who did all they could do to withstand physical and psychological torture, starvation, and sickness, and openly describes those who were forced to inflict suffering on others.
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Feelings, having listened to The Long Night
- By Lisa H on 05-31-18
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Nazi Women
- The Attraction of Evil
- By: Paul Roland
- Narrated by: Gabrielle Glaister
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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After the failure of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis believed their mission was to "masculinize" life in Germany. Hermann Goering told women, "Take a pot, a dustpan and a broom, and marry a man", but many still became active participants in murder and mayhem. From the Reich Bride Schools through the Bund Deutscher Mädel and the bizarre Lebensborn Aryan breeding programme to the brothels of the Sicherheitsdienst, this book covers the lives of women in the Third Reich, concentrating on those who sought personal power and influence amid the chaos.
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People are human
- By Stephen H on 07-04-18
By: Paul Roland
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Nazis Knew My Name
- 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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First One In, Last One Out
- Auschwitz Survivor 31321: A Memoir
- By: Marilyn Shimon
- Narrated by: Sarah Borges
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The horrifying true story of one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz. Growing up in New York, Marilyn Shimon often visited her uncle in California. She saw his scars, gaped at his 31321 tattoo and listened to his horrific stories of surviving the Holocaust. However, she could not relate to the suffering he endured or understand the significance of his accounts until now.
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Horrible narrator
- By Rachel Comegys on 09-06-24
By: Marilyn Shimon
What listeners say about Mistress of Life and Death
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kristen
- 02-09-25
Narration was rough…
But the story overall was very interesting. I believe the author did a great job sticking to facts of the history of events without adding too much of their own opinion on the individual herself as well as the victims.
The narrator however often sounded like AI. Very robotic at times like Siri.
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- KCD
- 02-19-25
Riveting & sorrowful
I really enjoyed the pace of this book. I finished it within a couple of days. Horrific subject matter & a perplexing study of an individual who seemingly had no reason to be so hateful & unspeakably cruel. Books like this important so that the horrors of the holocaust are not repeated.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-09-24
Wow!
It was an interesting discussion on evil and what makes us all capable of it!
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