
Rescued from the Ashes
The Diary of Leokadia Schmidt, Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto
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Narrated by:
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Rebecca Gibel
About this listen
The diary of a young Jewish housewife who, together with her husband and five-month-old baby, fled the Warsaw ghetto at the last possible moment, and survived the Holocaust hidden on the "Aryan" side of town in the loft of a run-down tinsmith's shed.
Rescued from the Ashes documents the incredible life story of Leokadia Schmidt and her small family and their daily struggle to survive the Warsaw Ghetto. Her memoir brings to life the vilest and most righteous qualities that people are capable of as she depicts the horrific living conditions in the ghetto and her family's harrowing escapes from the Nazi furnaces.
©2018 Heirs of Leokadia Schmidt (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realizing what this entailed.
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Excellent book
- By Rodney on 03-14-23
By: Shlomo Venezia
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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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I Am Juden
- Undercover in the SS
- By: Stephen Uzzell
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by the life of forgotten hero Haim Michael Klar, the number-one Amazon Charts best seller I Am Juden is the triumphant, epic tale of one man's incredible courage and resistance during the 20th century's darkest days. Jozef Siegler leads a perilous double life as an SS officer in the Krakow Ghetto and ultimately Auschwitz. His story is a tightrope walk through the Holocaust unlike any other. Nazi by day and Jewish resistance agent by night, any false move would result in instant death and exposure of his friends in the underground.
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A Riveting Tale of Courage and Resistance
- By Anonymous User on 06-27-24
By: Stephen Uzzell
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The Auschwitz Photographer
- The Forgotten Story of the WWII Prisoner Who Documented Thousands of Lost Souls
- By: Luca Crippa, Maurizio Onnis
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Poland, 1939. Professional photographer Wilhelm Brasse is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and finds himself in a deadly race to survive, assigned to work as the camp's intake photographer and take "identity pictures" of prisoners as they arrive by the trainload. The Auschwitz Photographer takes listeners behind the barbed wire fences of the world's most feared concentration camp, bringing Brasse's story to life as he clicks the shutter button thousands of times before ultimately joining the Resistance, defying the Nazis, and defiantly setting down his camera for good.
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More of an account than a story
- By Ronald washabaugh on 10-03-24
By: Luca Crippa, 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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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
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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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Maybe You Will Survive
- A Holocaust Memoir
- By: Aron Goldfarb, Graham Diamond
- Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In Graham Diamond's collaboration with Aron Goldfarb, the reader feels the struggles of people trying to survive during the Holocaust. The author recounts his experiences in Poland during the Holocaust, when he escaped from a forced labour camp and, with his brother, hid in underground holes on the grounds of an estate controlled by the Gestapo.
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Not accurate in all ways
- By Dinner on 05-11-20
By: Aron Goldfarb, and others
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My Family's Survival
- The True Story of How the Shwartz Family Escaped the Nazis and Survived the Holocaust
- By: Aviva Gat
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu, Neil Hellegers
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, the Shwartz family lived a calm life in their small village in Poland. Fifteen-year-old Rachel liked to sing and go out dancing at a local night club, while her older brother David was busy running a farm and raising a family with his wife Hinda. But all that changed when the war reached Butla. First, the Russians came and kicked them out of their house. Then, the Nazis came to cart them off. But the Shwartz family resisted. David decided that no matter what, his family would not be taken captive. Instead, he snuck his family out of their village and into Hungary.
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One of the best!
- By Ian on 08-11-20
By: Aviva Gat
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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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Irena's Children
- The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
- By: Tilar J. Mazzeo
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942 one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw Ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling children out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them.
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So worth reading...
- By Blue on 10-07-16
By: Tilar J. Mazzeo
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My Mother's War
- A Holocaust Survivor's Tribute to an Extraordinary Woman
- By: Michael Fryd
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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My Mother's War is a gripping memoir about one woman's unflinching courage and cunning in the face of horrific evil. This compelling true story follows author and Holocaust survivor Michael Fryd's larger-than-life mother who outsmarted the Nazis and saved her family. Michael Fryd was only three years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II and one of humanity’s darkest chapters. Forced to leave their home and everything they knew, Fryd's mother went to near impossible lengths to keep her family safe from Hitler’s clutches, including crafting clever lies, dealing in...
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Good story but distracting virtual voice
- By Linda on 01-01-25
By: Michael Fryd
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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
What listeners say about Rescued from the Ashes
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rachel Comegys
- 06-23-24
Great Story and Good Narrating.
I enjoyed this story and the narrating immensely. Sometimes narrators can ruin the story with their intonations or syllable emphasis. But this narrator did not disappoint. And the story was interesting.
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- JULIE SANFORD
- 08-31-24
Heartbreaking story
I had this as an audio book and stopped at about chapter 9. Although I was interested in the story I could not listen any longer. Being read by a woman with a solid American accent took away from the story.
I think I heard “my husband” 500 times!!
Give the husband a name. It was annoying.
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- May
- 08-11-24
The story is captivating
The narration wasn't good and made it hard to listen to the book especially in the beginning. The story is captivating and detailed. It's really sad for human life to be lost in unnecessary war.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-09-25
The determination of the characters
WAY TOOooo MUCH descriptions of the street names and addresses. What does a ST Name have to do with the ability to buy a needed food? Also I grew tired of her always saying “My husband” instead of just speaking his name! Her reading as a cadence that always ended on a slight up note and had not much Polish accent until she spoke the names of a street or a business and then ‘over exaggerated’ the polish pronunciation. Not my favorite book regarding the plight of the Jewish people during the war! Listen to another author and stay away from this reader!
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- Holly H
- 12-11-24
Amazing details
I have listened to many accounts of the Holocaust and this is the most detailed account by survivors of the horrific experience during the war in Poland.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rodney
- 02-14-23
Good book, interesting story
This was a very interesting book. I've read other books about the holocaust, but nothing like this story, of someone in the Warsaw ghetto, then escaping and being on the run, it's quite fascinating. There are parts where this lady is really judgemental of others and flat out annoying, but I actually appreciate that since it comes off as very authentic. People in a situation like this aren't always going to be the most likeable 24/7, it's something I wish more books like this contained.
The only issue with this book is the reader, who seems to think this is a kids book or a teenage fantasy book or something. AWFUL inflections, totally inappropriate for the content. I do think, by maybe hour 13 or so, the reader finally figures out that she should just be doing a straight read, it was that or I just was so beaten down by her poor reading I no longer noticed it. But in any case, the reader here is terrible for the majority of the book.
But the awful reader shouldn't put you off buying this. I've read a ton of WW2 history, and this fills in an area where I haven't seen a lot of content, at least not in audio.
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- LFM
- 04-09-25
Heartbreaking, Gripping, and Tragically Beautiful
Heartbreaking, Gripping, and Tragically Beautiful
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I don’t think I’ll ever stop consuming stories about WWII—each one is so different, so personal, and so devastating in its own way. Rescued from the Ashes is no exception. It’s a tragically beautiful story, made bearable only by the fact that it ends in survival. But the fear and anxiety it provokes? It’s intense.
Reading about the desperate strategies families used to survive—like couples splitting up or handing off their children to strangers—was gut-wrenching. As a mother, the thought of giving my child away, not knowing where they were or if I’d ever see them again… it’s unimaginable. Yet, for many women in this book, that was the only hope. Babies were almost always a death sentence.
My heart broke multiple times, my anxiety was through the roof, but I couldn’t look away. I kept reading because I knew there was survival at the end—and even that sliver of hope was worth it. A powerful read.
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- Jamie
- 02-17-23
This was supposed to be a true story?
It was poorly written never gave a sense of reality for what occurred In the Warsaw ghetto.
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