My Sister's Mother
A Memoir of War, Exile, and Stalin's Siberia
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Narrated by:
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Devika K.
About this listen
Donna Solecka Urbikas grew up in the Midwest during the golden years of the American century. But her Polish-born mother and half sister had endured dehumanizing conditions during World War II, as slave laborers in Siberia. War and exile created a profound bond between mother and older daughter, one that Donna would struggle to find with either of them.
1940, Janina Slarzynska and her five-year-old daughter Mira were taken by Soviet secret police (NKVD) from their small family farm in eastern Poland and sent to Siberia with hundreds of thousands of others. So began their odyssey of hunger, disease, cunning survival, desperate escape across a continent, and new love amidst terrible circumstances.
But in the 1950s, baby boomer Donna yearns for a “normal” American family while Janina and Mira are haunted by the past. In this unforgettable memoir, Donna recounts her family history and her own survivor’s story, finally understanding the damaged mother who had saved her sister.
Finalist, Best Traditional Non-Fiction Book, Chicago Writers Association
The book is published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
“Stunning, heartfelt memoir… a must-read for World War II history buffs.” (Leonard Kniffel, author of A Polish Son in the Motherland)
“Superbly records the bitter suffering both of victims of the Soviet Gulag and of displaced emigrants.” (Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, author of Between Nazis and Soviets)
“A primer for all who seek to understand the harrowing journey of Poles during this fateful period.” (Allen Paul, author of Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth)
©2016 Danuta A. Urbikas (P)2017 Redwood AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war.
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What We're Here For
- By Annette on 10-14-10
By: Bo Caldwell
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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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Guernica
- A Novel
- By: Dave Boling
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Calling to mind such timeless war-and-love classics as Corelli's Mandolin and The English Patient, Guernica is a transporting novel that thrums with the power of storytelling and is peopled with characters driven by grit and heart.
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Guernica a good historical novel
- By ARLEENE on 04-26-11
By: Dave Boling
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The Boy on the Wooden Box
- By: Leon Leyson, Marilyn J. Harran - contributor
- Narrated by: Danny Burstein
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler's List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancour, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr Leyson's telling. The Boy on the Wooden Box is a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you've ever read.
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Schindler's List though a child's eyes
- By Jan on 10-16-13
By: Leon Leyson, 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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Roman's Journey
- An Extraordinary Odyssey of Holocaust Survival
- By: Roman Halter
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Roman Halter was a spirited, optimistic schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German Polish) neighbors of their small town in western Poland greet the arrival of Hitler's armies with kisses and swastika flags. Within days, the family home had been seized, 12-year-old Roman had become a slave of the local SS chief, and, returning from an errand, he silently witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. So began his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe....
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Could not finish!!!!
- By Natalie Rohde on 02-23-16
By: Roman Halter
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Across Many Mountains
- A Tibetan Family's Epic Journey from Oppression to Freedom
- By: Yangzom Brauen
- Narrated by: Yangzom Brauen
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful, emotional memoir and an extraordinary portrait of three generations of Tibetan women whose lives are forever changed when Chairman Mao’s Red Army crushes Tibetan independence, sending a young mother and her six-year-old daughter on a treacherous journey across the snowy Himalayas toward freedom.
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Excellent all around!
- By Lynn on 09-06-12
By: Yangzom Brauen
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Behind Enemy Lines
- The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
- By: Marthe Cohn, Wendy Holden
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Marthe Cohn was a young Jewish woman living just across the German border in France when Hitler rose to power. Her family sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, including Jewish children sent away by their terrified parents. But soon her homeland was also under Nazi rule. As the Nazi occupation escalated, Marthe's sister was arrested and sent to Auschwitz and the rest of her family was forced to flee to the south of France. Always a fighter, Marthe joined the French Army and became a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army.
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Amazing story of a fighter and survivor
- By Magalie Busch on 05-06-19
By: Marthe Cohn, and others
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After the Roundup
- Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
- By: Joseph Weismann
- Narrated by: J. Clark Allison
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated. A thousand children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
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A “must-listen” book
- By Jonathan R Scupin on 09-25-18
By: Joseph Weismann
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Born Survivors
- Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope
- By: Wendy Holden
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Eastern Europe, 1944: Three women believe they are pregnant, but are torn from their husbands before they can be certain. Rachel is sent to Auschwitz, unaware that her husband has been shot. Priska and her husband travel there together, but are immediately separated. Also at Auschwitz, Anka hopes in vain to be reunited with her husband. With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left-their lives, and those of their unborn babies.
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Just an incredible story!
- By PCF on 06-03-17
By: Wendy Holden
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Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By: Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
What listeners say about My Sister's Mother
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- mz
- 02-19-20
Well-done memoir with parallel points of view
Good memoir with a different structure from other memoirs - mother's and daughter's points of view. Not the strongest survivors in war memoirs, but very lucky for the decisions they had made.
The narrator's voice is usually good, but when she tries to imitate male screaming sounds, it gets pretty annoying. Her voice gets very depressing at times, as if she's falling asleep.
Towards the 2/3 point, things got pretty bleak. There were multiple very depressing stories, with no positive memories to balance out. Coupled with the narrator's depressing voice, I had to stop listening for a while and didn't want to pick it back up the next day.
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- deb
- 10-20-17
Superb Title and What an Odyssey!
Donna Solecka Urbikas has masterfully captured the incessant stories of the exile and journeys during WWII and following years shared by her mother who seemed obsessed with making it known what had happened to her and her daughter Mira. The story blends the stories, later recorded memories of her mother and sister, bits of history of eastern Poland that Russia invaded in late 1939, the exile to work camps, life in refugee camps in so many countries, and rescue by a young Polish officer with a separation and reconnecting. The story and the distances covered by Janina and Mira offers insight to what happened to some of the Polish Catholics. The youngest daughter had the advantages of growing up and learning in American schools and witnessing the strong bond between the much older sister and mother with links to another world and time that the stories were insufficient to complete emotional bonds.
With education, travel, employment, marriage and becoming a mother, the author encounters family illnesses and various issues that have lead to a better understanding and an emotional journey to write this excellent book that has been in the works for nearly 30 years.
While I normally have had problems with books or movies that skip back and forth in time, the author has struck a really good balance with this style that seems to help with the character development and weaving herself into the story for the full impact of what WWII did to the lives of the people living then and the ones to follow.
The narrator is phenomenal for this book. I hope people will visit the author's web site for more information. Also, I hope that some people might share at least some portions of this book with students.
Dynamite book!
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1 person found this helpful
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- John Poust
- 01-13-22
Riviting
Once you start listening to this book you will not want to stop. Heartfelt and a story to which everyone can relate.
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- BarbieAlaska
- 11-29-23
THANK YOU
For writing this book. I listened to it in one setting through the night. I will listen again in a few months.
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