Preview
  • The Children's Block

  • A Novel Based on the True Story of an Auschwitz Survivor
  • By: Otto Kraus
  • Narrated by: Lewis Taylor
  • Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars (19 ratings)

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The Children's Block

By: Otto Kraus
Narrated by: Lewis Taylor
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Publisher's summary

A literary event that tells the story of 500 children who lived in the Czech Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau between September 1943 and June 1944.

We lived on a bunk built for four but in times of overcrowding, it slept seven and at times even eight. There was so little space on the berth that when one of us wanted to ease his hip, we all had to turn in a tangle of legs and chests and hollow bellies as if we were one many-limbed creature, a Hindu god or a centipede. We grew intimate not only in body but also in mind because we knew that though we were not born of one womb, we would certainly die together.

Alex Ehren is poet, a prisoner, and a teacher in block 31 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as the Children's Block. He spends his days trying to survive and illegally giving lessons to his young charges, all while shielding them as best he can from the impossible horrors of the camp. But trying to teach the children is not the only illicit activity that Alex is involved in. Alex is keeping a diary....

©2020 Otto Kraus (P)2020 Tantor
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What listeners say about The Children's Block

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A sobering inside look at the children's block

The narration was excellent and the story very well-written. It kept my interest and incorporated well-researched historical details. But I have 4 starts because the ending seemed very abrupt and there was no epilogue or note to the reader to explain what was missing.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Well written, often poetic

Slow start, but then it came alive. Definitely on my list of top 50 WW2 historical fiction.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Basically Holocaust porn

I get that in the darkest times people are still people, but this just felt like a man describing naked women constantly throughout the book. It was uncomfortable to read, and not in the sense of the Holocaust is uncomfortable in and of itself because of what happened, but because I don’t want to hear about how a woman is embarrassed and shamed and humiliated, but her nipples looked beautiful. I feel like it was cruel.

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Did not like

Did not like. I wish I could get my credit back did not this really at all

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