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The Book Smugglers
- Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts - first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets - by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion-including the readiness to risk one's life - to literature and art.
And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, "The Jerusalem of Lithuania".
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Read this to understand Doctor Zhivago and Russia
- By KathrynVB on 10-16-14
By: Peter Finn, and others
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Defying Hitler
- The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule
- By: Gordon Thomas, Greg Lewis
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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An enthralling story that vividly resurrects the web of everyday Germans who resisted Nazi rule.
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The Righteous Few
- By Linda on 05-19-19
By: Gordon Thomas, and others
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Judgment Before Nuremberg
- The Holocaust in the Ukraine and the First Nazi War Crimes Trial
- By: Greg Dawson
- Narrated by: Gary Dikeos
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When people think of the Holocaust, they think of Auschwitz, of Dachau; and when they think of justice for this terrible chapter in history, they think of Nuremberg. Not of Russia or the Ukraine, and certainly not a town called Kharkov. But in reality, the first war-crimes trial against the Nazis was in this idyllic, peaceful Ukrainian city, which is fitting, because it is also where the Holocaust actually began.
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Don’t Insult Your Audience
- By Michael Richards on 01-21-22
By: Greg Dawson
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Never Remember
- Searching for Stalin's Gulags in Putin's Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gulag was a monstrous network of labor camps that held and killed millions of prisoners from the 1930s to the 1950s. More than half a century after the end of Stalinist terror, the geography of the Gulag has been barely sketched and the number of its victims remains unknown. Has the Gulag been forgotten? Writer Masha Gessen and photographer Misha Friedman set out across Russia in search of the memory of the Gulag.
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a wonderful reminder never to forget
- By Privet on 05-25-19
By: Masha Gessen
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Lenin
- The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Aris
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's unique biography - the first in English in nearly two decades - is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century but a portrait of Lenin the man. Unexpectedly, Lenin was someone who loved nature, hunting, and fishing and could identify hundreds of species of plants, a despotic ruler whose closest ties and friendships were with women.
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Lenin totally took an extra piece of that cake.
- By John Gathly on 05-14-19
By: Victor Sebestyen
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Hanns and Rudolf
- The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
- By: Thomas Harding
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.
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I Read This Marvelous Book...
- By Douglas on 01-04-14
By: Thomas Harding
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The House of Government
- A Saga of the Russian Revolution
- By: Yuri Slezkine, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 45 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction. The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment.
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Inside saga of the leaders of Bolshevism & the USSR
- By Edward V. Blanchard on 11-05-17
By: Yuri Slezkine, and others
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Mussolini's Daughter
- The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe
- By: Caroline Moorehead
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Edda Mussolini was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s oldest and favorite child. At 19, she was married to Count Galleazzo Ciano, Il Duce’s Minister for Foreign Affairs during the 1930s, the most turbulent decade in Italy’s fascist history. In the years preceding World War II, Edda ruled over Italy’s aristocratic families and the cultured and middle classes while selling Fascism on the international stage. How a young woman wielded such control is the heart of Moorehead’s fascinating history.
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Mind Blowing
- By Greg on 01-27-23
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Prague Winter
- A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history.
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History from a Personal Perspective
- By Jeanette Finan on 02-22-13
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Stalin
- The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives
- By: Edvard Radzinsky
- Narrated by: David McCallum
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Abridged
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The Kremlin intrigues, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class, Radzinsky thrillingly brings them to life. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might, and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history, is solved.
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A Great Book About a Great Tyrant
- By Moon Man on 05-01-05
By: Edvard Radzinsky
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Aftermath
- Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955
- By: Harald Jähner, Shaun Whiteside - translator
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust - and features over 40 eye-opening black-and-white photographs and posters from the period.
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Where are the photos?
- By Cassandra on 01-17-22
By: Harald Jähner, and others
What listeners say about The Book Smugglers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Logophile
- 10-12-20
The rescue of Jewish culture in WWII's Lithuania.
I would not recommend this as a first WW2 book but, after reading extensively on what catastrophic deliberate destruction and hatred of anything or anyone Jewish in central Europe before, during, and after the war, it provided me an insightful realization of the way a few key committed Jews made it truly their legacy to save the literature, books, Torah scrolls, cultural relics, and documents at the risk - and cost - of their lives in Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania. This book follows the key players - and the literature - from before the major Nazi pogroms, past Stalin, past the fall of the Soviet Union. Touching, amazing, dry, then fascinating again, it felt like it had reached a good ending after Part 3, but Part 4 brought it to an "Ahhhhh."
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- Marian
- 05-21-19
Big Reasons to Redefine What Belongs to Whom
I highly recommend this book both a timeless, placeless testament to cultural misappropriation and, additionally, to the specific story of tenacity and will during lifetimes of cultural wrongs. If you are not generally a reader of “Holocaust era” memoirs, be advised the lessons of minority cultures and their efforts to preserve their histories and cultures as regimes change, wars pass through, leaders issue foolish and shameful dictates, borders for legal entities alter, and power centers shift are not restricted to Jewish experience. Through the extremes, and this book provides extreme examples, we can create global policies for cultural rights. As an American raised in the diversity of southern California, I cannot comprehend and hope never to comprehend politics of exclusion and genocide. Our miscellanies give depth, interest, strength, and mutual relevance.
This is not a “spy thriller,” but anxiety rivers through the telling. The first few chapters do a gentle, slow launch of the book. As the book proceeds, you’ll hear great poetry, see images crafted with words long ago, sicken from the losses, feel the hope in despair, and understand human desperation to control what you can influence.
There were some personal relationships sentences here and there that I felt should have been under the editor’s Sharpie, but the scope of the scholarship seems to otherwise be significant and strong. At other times, I found personal life applications for some of the homily-style wisdom in these pages.
I listened on Audible. This was a slight disadvantage as I do not have a visual to spell some Yiddish names or phrases in the book. A Kindle/paper copy to accompany Audible might be a good idea, especially for people who are reading this book for school/university/research purposes. The Audible delivery, was, otherwise, without deficit.
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- deb
- 10-04-17
Magnificent Obsession to Save Jewish Culture
The Jews of the Vilna ghetto (now Vilnius, Lithuania) during the Nazi occupation had their own group of characters who served as a form of Monuments Men endeavoring to save their culture contained in manuscripts, various documents, religious items, and more from removal to Germany or destruction. The author masterfully tells about the poets and their friends who smuggled items to safe places to be found later only to find that the items had to be smuggled again from the grasp of the Soviet Union. Some of the poetry and lyrics for songs are incorporated into the story of the community. The holdings in the community were among 43 of the top libraries that Germany wanted to include in their master library. The character development and the personal stories make this an excellent book.
This book sheds light on a type of Jewish resistance and optimism during the Nazi occupation. Most people would not think of how important the books and other documents were during the WWII and later timeframe.
The Book Smugglers adds more depth to the story of the books and libraries looted by adding the characters. Anders Rydell told part of the story of the stolen libraries in The Book Thieves...
Read or listen to The Book Smugglers soon, maybe even read it again.
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- Jeannie Marcus
- 06-02-18
An important and trajectory story
A well told story of the fate of the Jewish people and culture in Eastern Europe.
The details of the attempted eradication of the Jewish people should be known and told to make sure it doesn’t happen again to any people.
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