Village of Secrets
Defying the Nazis in Vichy France
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
About this listen
From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the fascinating story of a French village that helped save thousands hunted by the Gestapo during World War II.
High up in the mountains of the southern Massif Central in France lie tiny, remote villages united by a long and particular history. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, Freemasons, communists, and, above all, Jews, many of them orphans whose parents had been deported to concentration camps. There were no informers, no denunciations, and no one broke ranks. During raids, the children would hide in the woods, their packs on their backs, waiting to hear the farmers' song that told them it was safe to return. After the war, Le Chambon became one of only two places in the world to be honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations.
Just why and how Le Chambon and its outlying villages came to save so many people has never fully been told. With unprecedented access to newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany, along with interviews documenting the testimony of surviving villagers, Caroline Moorehead paints an inspiring portrait of courage and determination: of what was accomplished when a small group of people banded together to oppose tyranny.
A major contribution to the history of the Second World War, Village of Secrets sets the record straight about the events in Chambon and pays tribute to a group of heroic individuals for whom saving others became more important than their own lives.
©2014 Caroline Moorehead (P)2014 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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The daughter of a Jewish seed exporter, the author was born Mira Ryczke in 1923 in a suburb of the Baltic seaport of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her childhood was happy, and she learned to cherish her faith and heritage. Through the 1930s, Mira's family remained in the Danzig area despite a changing political climate that was compelling many friends and neighbors to leave. With the Polish capitulation to Germany in the autumn of 1939, however, Mira and her family were forced from their home.
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4.5* - memoir of a survivor
- By Christine Newton on 06-09-17
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My Brother's Keeper
- Christians Who Risked All to Protect Jewish Targets of the Nazi Holocaust
- By: Rod Gragg
- Narrated by: Rick Zieff
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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My Brother's Keeper unfolds powerful stories of Christians from across denominations who gave everything they had to save the Jewish people from the evils of the Holocaust. This unlikely group of believers, later honored by the nation of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations, included ordinary teenage girls, pastors, priests, a German army officer, a former Italian fascist, an international spy, and even a princess.
By: Rod Gragg
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Dancing with the Enemy
- My Family's Holocaust Secret
- By: Paul Glaser
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster, Christa Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The gripping story of the author's aunt, a Jewish dance instructor who was betrayed to the Nazis by the two men she loved, yet managed to survive WWII by teaching dance lessons to the SS at Auschwitz. Her epic life becomes a window into the author's own past and the key to discovering his Jewish roots.
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Amazing Unique
- By Nordic Artisan on 05-11-19
By: Paul Glaser
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A Lucky Child
- A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy
- By: Thomas Buergenthal
- Narrated by: Thomas Buergenthal, Don Hagen
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir, A Lucky Child. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life.
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Compelling Account
- By Simone on 04-23-15
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A Promise at Sobibor
- A Jewish Boy's Story of Revolt and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland
- By: Philip "Fiszel" Bialowitz, Joseph Bialowitz
- Narrated by: Jim Tedder
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A Promise at Sobibór is the story of Fiszel Bialowitz, a teenaged Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi gas chambers. Between April 1942 and October 1943, about 250,000 Jews from European countries and the Soviet Union were sent to the Nazi death camp at Sobibór in occupied Poland. Sobibór was not a transit camp or work camp: Its sole purpose was efficient mass murder. On October 14, 1943, approximately half of the 650 or so prisoners still alive at Sobibór undertook a daring and precisely planned revolt, killing SS officers and fleeing through minefields and machine-gun fire.
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Another Prisoner's Insight of Nazi Death Camp Sobibor
- By Polar Bear on 06-01-24
By: Philip "Fiszel" Bialowitz, and others
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The Whisperers
- Private Life in Stalin's Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 29 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.
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A Real Life Dystopian Nightmare
- By Timothy on 08-31-18
By: Orlando Figes
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Trail of Hope
- The Anders Army, an Odyssey Across Three Continents
- By: Norman Davies
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this remarkable work, renowned historian Professor Norman Davies draws from years of meticulous research to recount the compelling story of the Polish II Corps or "Anders Army", and their exceptional journey from the Gulag of Siberia through Iran, the Middle East, and North Africa to the battlefields of Italy to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Allied forces. Complete with firsthand accounts from the men and women who lived through it, this is a unique record of one of the most fascinating episodes of World War II.
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Amazing story of Polish peoples and never giving up hope for free Poland.
- By Peter Chmiel on 09-24-19
By: Norman Davies
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Americans in Paris
- Life and Death under Nazi Occupation
- By: Charles Glass
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained.
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Informative, but average engagement
- By Leann on 05-09-17
By: Charles Glass
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The Assassination of Heydrich
- Hitler's Hangman and the Czech Resistance
- By: Jan G. Wiener
- Narrated by: Mark Kamish
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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If you only listen to one book about what it felt like to be present during the worst time in modern human history, a time when your life could be snuffed out for having the mere thought of opposition against the Nazi regime, this should be the book. It is told by survivors and by one of the greatest survivors of them all, Jan Wiener.
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Hard to listen to
- By Amazon Customer on 01-26-23
By: Jan G. Wiener
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Young Stalin
- By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity, fancying himself a poet and a priest, and finally embracing revolutionary idealism as his Messianic mission in life. Equal parts scholar and terrorist, a mastermind of bank robberies, extortion, piracy, and murder, he was so impressive in his brutality that Lenin made him, along with Trotsky, his chief henchman.
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Really Good Read/Listen
- By Jim on 02-20-11
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Wild Swans
- Three Daughters of China
- By: Jung Chang
- Narrated by: Joy Osmanski
- Length: 22 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular best seller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.
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Accurate, moving and chilling
- By David on 12-15-12
By: Jung Chang
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The Vatican Pimpernel
- The World War II Exploits of the Monsignor Who Saved Over 6,500 Lives
- By: Brian Fleming
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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During the German occupation of Rome from 1942-1944, Irishman Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty ran an escape organization for Allied POWs and civilians, including Jews. Safe within the Vatican state, he regularly ventured out in disguise to continue his mission, which earned him the nickname 'The Pimpernel of the Vatican'. When the Allies entered Rome, he and his collaborators - priests, nuns, and laypeople of numerous nationalities and religious beliefs - had saved the lives of over 6,500 people.
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Enthralling
- By Jean on 05-27-15
By: Brian Fleming
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The Aquariums of Pyongyang
- By: Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education". Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.
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Riveting!!
- By Iread on 11-12-20
By: Chol-hwan Kang, and others
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As war swept across Europe in 1940, the idyllic life of Fey von Hassell seemed a world away from the conflict. The daughter of Ulrich von Hassell, Hitler's Ambassador to Italy, her marriage to Italian aristocrat Detalmo Pirzio-Biroli brought with it a castle and an estate in the north of Italy. Beautiful and privileged, Fey and her two young sons lead a tranquil life undisturbed by the trauma and privations of war. But with Fascism approaching its zenith, Fey's peaceful existence is threatened when Ulrich and Detalmo take the brave and difficult decision to resist the Nazis.
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In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller’s words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, “the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.”
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Mind Blowing
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Our world seems to be experiencing stagnant economic growth, climatic deterioration, dwindling natural resources, and an unsustainable level of population growth. The world is doomed, they argue, and there are just too many problems to overcome. But is this really the case? In Fewer, Richer, Greener, author Laurence B. Siegel reveals that the world has improved - and will continue to improve - in almost every dimension imaginable.
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A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded at 2:54 a.m. on October 12, 1984. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England. Rooms were obliterated, dozens of people wounded, five killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her suite when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry would have sliced her to ribbons. As it was, she survived—and history changed.
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What listeners say about Village of Secrets
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Thoughtful Shopper
- 07-14-23
Quality research and excellent writing
This is the third book I have read about the WWII history of this remote mountain plateau in France, whose inhabitants saved the lives of many. Moorehead has obviously carefully sifted through conflicting memories of events to bring us a balanced account. Yet her writing never gets tedious.
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- Ion Marin Man
- 10-10-23
A very beautiful book
History told through the eyes and feelings of the people that lived it. A lesson that doesn't push to be a lesson. Just a reminder. From the heart to the heart.
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- Lauren
- 06-23-15
Outstanding!
A balanced and fascinating story of the hiding and saving of Jews during the German occupation of France. Moorhead does an excellent job of explaining the contested opinions and histories of the actions of the remote French villages. What a story of triumph over evil and hope in humanity!
Had I read instead of listened to, it may have been easier to keep names/stories of individuals straight.
The narrator was FANTASTIC.
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4 people found this helpful
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- R. W. Tether
- 11-21-22
Very interesting!
This is a very good and very interesting book!
I did find myself a little mired in details about specific people in the early chapters, it once though that it progresses well and is very interesting.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Catherine Pfaff
- 09-02-19
Extrodanarily researched with consideration for conflicting memories
I will read this again. I want to study the photos and learn their faces and names by heart. The history of this region during WWII was very slow to surface exactly for the reasons they were so successful at aiding the Jewish children - they are humble and did not seek attention for the many good deeds they carried out. I am looking forward to visiting the area, and seeing the museum that they reluctantly created. They don’t seek tourists crowding their town. But I must honor them by learning their stories well enough to retell them.
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3 people found this helpful
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- just asking for some common sense
- 02-12-22
Not a very cohesive book
Lately, I've been more interested in World War II so have been looking for a variety of books on the subject. This one looked promising despite some mixed reviews. I try not to read too many reviews ahead of time because I want to form my own opinions.
So here are my opinions. Despite some good and compelling writing, and a lot of details, this book is a bit of a mess. There are so many threads woven in, but most are broken. There are not too many people when you consider all the facts in the book, but Caroline Moorehead would have done better to focus on a few people with the others being small parts. Here almost everyone is a small player.
The other problem with this book is that by the end I had no clue how many people were saved. There are many that don't seem to get saved, but there were so few memorable personages that I never formed a connection to any of them.
I understand that there are 3 other books by Caroline Moorehead about WWII, but I'll probably skip them, even though I've heard at least one of them is much better than this. I'm sad to give a lukewarm review for this book since so much research and work went into it.
The narration was better than the book.
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- Cathy Quesada
- 06-29-23
Very informative
I really enjoyed this book and learning all the information it contained. There are some very sad
stories, but also uplifting one .
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- Satisfied
- 08-06-21
A Historical Review of a Significant Story
Overall, this historical account of the resistance to the Nazi’s by those living a rural plateau and beyond in Vichy France was very moving to me, in part because it recounts a season and attitudes so similar to what is happening in the United States and other a Western countries today. Weaknesses of the book are the lack of immediate translations of the many French phrases and titles, and the immemorable names of people and places (though this is also its strength in giving voice to many of the “righteous” and the collaborators [or worse] during that time; this weakness is addressed in a list offered in the front of the paper and Kindle versions). If you don’t want to hear “history” but only the story, this may not be a book for you. But it is an important voice about a courageous people who acted humanly in an inhumane world.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Debra L. Mock
- 12-26-22
Ordinary People Heros
I had never heard this wonderful story and was intrigued right from the start..so many ordinary people risked their lives to help the children, their parents (if they were still alive after being sent to various Concentration camps) so many stepped in to help.
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- Jonathan
- 07-07-23
Well researched
Won’t say I enjoyed this. The reality that so many didn’t escape is heart rending. But the deeds of those that did right shouldn’t be forgotten.
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