-
The Jews of Biržai
- The Last Sabbath
- Narrated by: Bill Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
"Dusk approached, yet the lingering sun stubbornly revealed the ruthless efficiency that primal evil has when armed with bullets, power, and blind obedience. The sun itself was soon ashamed of the images it was forced to show. As the sun set and the Sabbath arrived, there was nobody alive to celebrate it. Just as the last trace of smoke escaping from the barrel of the murderer's rifle announced that the lives of the Birzai
Jews had been extinguished, so did the final smolder from the Shabbat candles this night proclaim the end of a once vibrant Jewish community." (Excerpt, The Jews of Birzai: The Last Sabbath)
The Jews of Biržai launches the listener swiftly into the pre-World War II life of Birzai, a town in northeastern Lithuania where Jews and their neighbors share the same desires for living quiet lives. Amid the growing winds of war, the Jews of Birzai are increasingly faced with the sudden contrast from normalcy to anxiety and fear, and finally to the resignation of betrayal, and the hopelessness and horror of an inevitable fate.
The Jews of Biržai not only memorializes the lives of its families murdered in the summer of 1941 but honors them with positive and hopeful stories recovered from both the Jews who suffered through this time and the righteous Lithuanians who helped and saved some of them. This book provides a legacy of the shtetl, memorializes the 2,400 who died on August 8, 1941, and commemorates the millions of victims who were lost in the Holocaust.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Related to this topic
-
Maybe You Will Survive
- A Holocaust Memoir
- By: Aron Goldfarb, Graham Diamond
- Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Not accurate in all ways
- By Dinner on 05-11-20
By: Aron Goldfarb, and others
-
The Nine
- The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
- By: Gwen Strauss
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
-
-
Soooo good!
- By anne simpson on 09-28-21
By: Gwen Strauss
-
Nazis Knew My Name
- A Remarkable Story of Survival and Courage in Auschwitz
- By: Magda Hellinger, Maya Lee, David Brewster
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton, Zoe Carides
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In March 1942, 25-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS.
-
-
Extraordinary courage.
- By Alice@Wonderland on 10-01-24
By: Magda Hellinger, and others
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great story with an added benefit
- By Scottsville Stu on 12-30-21
By: Rebecca Frankel
-
The Light of Days
- The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
- By: Judy Batalion
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters - a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.
-
-
A profoundly moving book
- By Brian R Smith on 04-18-21
By: Judy Batalion
-
The Last Jews in Berlin
- By: Leonard Gross
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Very good WWll Jewish lives in Berlin
- By it.is grat!' on 10-30-24
By: Leonard Gross
-
Maybe You Will Survive
- A Holocaust Memoir
- By: Aron Goldfarb, Graham Diamond
- Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Not accurate in all ways
- By Dinner on 05-11-20
By: Aron Goldfarb, and others
-
The Nine
- The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
- By: Gwen Strauss
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
-
-
Soooo good!
- By anne simpson on 09-28-21
By: Gwen Strauss
-
Nazis Knew My Name
- A Remarkable Story of Survival and Courage in Auschwitz
- By: Magda Hellinger, Maya Lee, David Brewster
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton, Zoe Carides
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In March 1942, 25-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS.
-
-
Extraordinary courage.
- By Alice@Wonderland on 10-01-24
By: Magda Hellinger, and others
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great story with an added benefit
- By Scottsville Stu on 12-30-21
By: Rebecca Frankel
-
The Light of Days
- The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
- By: Judy Batalion
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters - a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.
-
-
A profoundly moving book
- By Brian R Smith on 04-18-21
By: Judy Batalion
-
The Last Jews in Berlin
- By: Leonard Gross
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Very good WWll Jewish lives in Berlin
- By it.is grat!' on 10-30-24
By: Leonard Gross
-
On the Run in Nazi Berlin
- A Memoir
- By: Bert Lewyn, Bev Saltzman Lewyn - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Berlin, 1942. The Gestapo arrest 18-year-old Bert Lewyn and his parents, sending the latter to their deaths and Bert to work in a factory making guns for the Nazi war effort. Miraculously tipped off the morning the Gestapo round up all the Jews who work in the factories, Bert goes underground. He finds shelter sometimes with compassionate civilians, sometimes with people who find his skills useful and sometimes in the cellars of bombed-out buildings.
-
-
NOT YOUR USUAL STORY ABOUT THE NAZIS...FANTASTIC!
- By Steve on 03-21-19
By: Bert Lewyn, and others
-
A Train Near Magdeburg
- A Teacher's Journey into the Holocaust
- By: Matthew Rozell
- Narrated by: Nick Cracknell
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of The Things Our Fathers Saw in the World War II eyewitness history series comes this book, offering the true story behind an iconic photograph taken at the liberation of a death train, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. It's brought to life by the history teacher who discovered it and went on to reunite hundreds of Holocaust survivors with the actual American soldiers who saved them.
-
-
important story
- By Amazon Customer on 04-04-20
By: Matthew Rozell
-
999
- The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz
- By: Heather Dune Macadam, Caroline Moorehead - foreword
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women - many of them teenagers - were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few survived.
-
-
I don’t think you can ever fully understand
- By Shelley on 02-25-20
By: Heather Dune Macadam, and others
-
Mitka’s Secret
- A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust
- By: Steven W. Brallier, Joel N. Lohr, Lynn G. Beck
- Narrated by: Trevor Thompson
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
This should be a movie!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 09-11-21
By: Steven W. Brallier, and others
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
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
-
The Happiest Man on Earth
- The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor
- By: Eddie Jaku
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. Every day of the next seven years of his life, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and finally on a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days.
-
-
Everyone needs to listen to this amazing man
- By Christan Derryberry on 05-12-21
By: Eddie Jaku
-
The Watchmaker's Daughter
- The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Watchmaker’s Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that listeners haven’t heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom—a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.
-
-
Good effort!
- By Michele on 03-07-23
By: Larry Loftis
-
The Sisters of Auschwitz
- The True Story of Two Jewish Sisters’ Resistance in the Heart of Nazi Territory
- By: Roxane van Iperen
- Narrated by: Susan Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unforgettable story of two unsung heroes of World War II: sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper who joined the Dutch Resistance, helped save dozen of lives, were captured by the Nazis, and ultimately survived the Holocaust.
-
-
A Miss
- By FritzFamily on 10-06-21
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Must Read!
- By Stephanie on 12-22-21
By: Sayragul Sauytbay, and others
-
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea
- One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival
- By: Melissa Fleming
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Doaa Al Zamel was once an average Syrian girl growing up in a crowded house in a bustling city near the Jordanian border. But in 2011 her life was upended. Inspired by the events of the Arab Spring, Syrians began to stand up against their own oppressive regime. When the army was sent to take control of Doaa's hometown, strict curfews, power outages, water shortages, air raids, and violence disrupted everyday life.
-
-
One woman's story
- By msrae on 07-06-17
By: Melissa Fleming
-
After the Last Border
- Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America
- By: Jessica Goudeau
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The welcoming and acceptance of immigrants and refugees have been central to America's identity for centuries - yet America has periodically turned its back in times of the greatest humanitarian need. After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women as they struggle for the 21st-century American dream, having won the "golden ticket" to settle as refugees in Austin, Texas.
-
-
Great Content. Odd Structure.
- By Susan Stillings on 02-10-21
By: Jessica Goudeau
-
Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano
- Religion, Theology and the Holocaust
- By: Alan Scott Haft
- Narrated by: Price Waldman
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alan Scott Haft provides the first-hand testimony of his father, Harry Haft, a holocaust victim with a singular story of endurance, desperation, and unrequited love. Harry Haft was a 16-year-old Polish Jew when he entered a concentration camp in 1944. Forced to fight other Jews in bare-knuckle bouts for the perverse entertainment of SS officers, Harry quickly learned that his own survival depended on his ability to fight and win. Haft details the inhumanity of the "sport" in which he must perform in brutal contests for the officers.
-
-
Human Cruelty and Love
- By Charles N. Erickson on 05-27-22
By: Alan Scott Haft