Mitka’s Secret
A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust
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Narrated by:
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Trevor Thompson
About this listen
The remarkable life story of Mitka Kalinski, who survived seven years of enslavement - while still a child - to a Nazi officer during and after World War II.
Mitka Kalinski had never revealed his past to anyone. Not even to his wife or his four children. But in 1981, three decades after it had all ended, Mitka finally broke his silence about the horrors he had endured during the Holocaust and in the years immediately afterward: not only German concentration camps and sadistic medical experiments, but also seven years of enslavement in the household of a Nazi officer, “Iron” Gustav Dörr.
Having been orphaned before the war, Mitka did not know his origins or even his name. Torture, slavery, and a false name stripped him of his identity entirely. Thus, when he immigrated to the United States in 1951, Mitka seized the opportunity to bury his past and forge a new life. He lived the American life in all its fullness and moved to Nevada with his beloved wife, Adrienne, and their children. But the secret he carried became an increasingly heavy burden, preventing wholeness and healing.
This is Mitka’s account of facing the past, confronting his captors, connecting with lost relatives, and finding peace in the rediscovery of his origins. For Mitka, this also meant reclaiming his Jewish heritage - a journey that gave him a new sense of purpose and freedom from the lingering effects of trauma that had filled his life to that point. By the end, Mitka’s Secret is less a story of survival and more one of redemption and transformation - from hidden suffering to abundant joy.
©2021 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (P)2021 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing CompanyListeners also enjoyed...
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The Survivors
- A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing
- By: Adam Frankel
- Narrated by: Adam Frankel, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines - a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is.
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Amazing story
- By Alissa on 12-26-19
By: Adam Frankel
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The Last Jews in Berlin
- By: Leonard Gross
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately 160,000 Jews called Berlin home. By 1943 less than 5,000 remained in the nation's capital, the epicenter of Nazism, and by the end of the war, that number had dwindled to 1,000. All the others had died in air raids, starved to death, committed suicide, or been shipped off to the death camps. In this captivating and harrowing book, Leonard Gross details the real-life stories of a dozen Jewish men and women who spent the final 27 months of World War II underground, hiding in plain sight.
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Very good WWll Jewish lives in Berlin
- By it.is grat!' on 10-30-24
By: Leonard Gross
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The Nazi’s Granddaughter
- How I Discovered My Grandfather Was a War Criminal
- By: Silvia Foti
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A deathbed promise leads a daughter on an incredible journey to write about her grandfather who was a famous war hero. But this journey had a terrible destination: the discovery that he was a Nazi war criminal.
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A Compelling Story Well Told
- By Catherine S. Read on 03-17-22
By: Silvia Foti
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My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
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Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
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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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Always Remember Your Name
- A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz
- By: Andra Bucci, Tatiana Bucci
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 28, 1944, six-year-old Tati and her four-year-old sister, Andra, were roused from their sleep and arrested. Along with their mother, Mira, their aunt, and cousin Sergio, they were deported to Auschwitz. Over 230,000 children were deported to the camp, where Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, performed deadly experiments on them. Only a few dozen children survived, Tati and Andra among them.
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Important read!
- By Holly Thomas on 02-24-22
By: Andra Bucci, and others
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The Chief Witness
- Escape from China's Modern-Day Concentration Camps
- By: Sayragul Sauytbay, Alexandra Cavelius
- Narrated by: Xifeng Brooks
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in China’s northwestern province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime? Being Kazakh, one of China’s ethnic minorities. The northwestern province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years, it has become home to more than 1,200 penal camps - modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities.
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A Must Read!
- By Stephanie on 12-22-21
By: Sayragul Sauytbay, and others
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Before and After
- The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
- By: Judy Christie, Lisa Wingate
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of 15 adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots.
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Badly written
- By Stacie on 02-25-20
By: Judy Christie, and others
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The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
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I Want You to Know We're Still Here
- A Post-Holocaust Memoir
- By: Esther Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer, Esther Safran Foer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching.
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Interesting but…
- By mk on 08-23-21
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Sign My Name to Freedom
- A Memoir of a Pioneering Life
- By: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Narrated by: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed.
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How she stressed Creole, but I guess it was a badge if honor not being regular black.
- By Satisfied customer on 05-21-24
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Echoes from the Holocaust
- A Memoir
- By: Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
- Narrated by: Susan Marlowe
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a Jewish seed exporter, the author was born Mira Ryczke in 1923 in a suburb of the Baltic seaport of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her childhood was happy, and she learned to cherish her faith and heritage. Through the 1930s, Mira's family remained in the Danzig area despite a changing political climate that was compelling many friends and neighbors to leave. With the Polish capitulation to Germany in the autumn of 1939, however, Mira and her family were forced from their home.
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4.5* - memoir of a survivor
- By Christine Newton on 06-09-17
What listeners say about Mitka’s Secret
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kaila
- 08-15-22
wow!
This is an incredible work of a man's tragic life! Tells about a lot of the less talked about Ukrainian experiences of ww2 many of which stories have not survived.
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- KH1712
- 06-18-22
Great new perspective
This is a very loving story. It starts with a young child and continues to tell the story all the way to the end. Thank you for not stopping short.
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- GoDavyGo/GoCassGo
- 09-01-21
The most incredible story.
Words cannot describe or say how profound this book is! Absolutely gripping till the last page.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Nicholas Kalinski
- 09-13-21
Choose life
This story is beyond amazing. As Mitka’s grandson I grew up hearing these stories and being there for many of the later revelations. I can say that this book has been a dream and a work in progress for decades. It did not disappoint. Beautifully written and brings my grandfather’s mannerisms to life. I feel this story needs to be shared and retold. Thank you to the authors and narrator for such an amazing job.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-11-21
This should be a movie!!!
There is so much to this story. Please everyone … share and recommend it. Especially now with what is happening in the world. It is a love story and leaves the reader knowing there is hope and goodness if you choose to accept it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- mamasamuels
- 01-30-23
Excellent!
This book helped me to understand my own father more as he grew up in Holland during WW2.
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- Mrs. Clark
- 11-25-23
Decades of Research Unearth Profound Truths
I loved the honesty of the writing and the meticulous organization of decades of facts into a cohesive monolith to the resilience of the human spirit. Wow!
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