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By Chance Alone
- A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz
- Narrated by: Douglas E. Hughes
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
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- Written by: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
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Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death.
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Such an important book
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Into the Forest
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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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Ru
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Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation, and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream.
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The Boy in the Woods
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Maxwell Smart was 11 years old when his entire family was killed before his eyes. He might have died along with them, but his mother selflessly ordered him to save himself. Alone in the forest, he dug a hole in the ground for shelter and foraged for food in farmers’ fields. His clothes in rags and close to starvation, he repeatedly escaped death at the hands of Nazis and Ukrainian thugs.
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Not well researched
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Forgiveness
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When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Canada picked wrong
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We Have Always Been Here
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Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger. When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: Bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage.
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Captivating Listen
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
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- Written by: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death.
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Such an important book
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Into the Forest
- A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love
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- Narrated by: Natalie Pela
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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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Ru
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Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation, and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream.
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The Boy in the Woods
- A True Story of Survival During the Second World War
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Maxwell Smart was 11 years old when his entire family was killed before his eyes. He might have died along with them, but his mother selflessly ordered him to save himself. Alone in the forest, he dug a hole in the ground for shelter and foraged for food in farmers’ fields. His clothes in rags and close to starvation, he repeatedly escaped death at the hands of Nazis and Ukrainian thugs.
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Not well researched
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Forgiveness
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- Written by: Mark Sakamoto
- Narrated by: Geoff Sugiyama
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When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Canada picked wrong
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We Have Always Been Here
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Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger. When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: Bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage.
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Captivating Listen
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Hidden Gold
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It’s 1942, and the Nazis are rounding up Jews in the Polish town of Pinczow for transport to the Treblinka death camp. Leib and Hanna Gold thought they had more time to develop an escape plan. While Leib leaves to negotiate a hiding place, Hanna and their children, Shoshana, Esther, and 12-year-old David, steal away in the night to find shelter with a family friend. Leib promises to join them in the morning, but when daylight breaks, Leib had vanished. Hanna must flee to a safer refuge or she and her children will perish.
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Moving account
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Lady in the Lake
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Last year, Maddie Schwartz was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost 20 years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl - assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.
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Just OK
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The Tattooist of Auschwitz
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In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (German for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism - but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
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Excellent content w an obvious recording flaw
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In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality - and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending Sara, Elzbieta makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism.
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great book
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I Escaped from Auschwitz
- The Shocking True Story of the World War II Hero Who Escaped the Nazis and Helped Save Over 200,000 Jews
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April 7, 1944 - This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over 100 miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz.
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First hand reports
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Written by: Rudolf Vrba, and others
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Five Chimneys
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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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Excellent
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Just Kids
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Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late 60s and 70s and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
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Dull zzzz
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Split Tooth
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A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy and friendship and parents' love. She knows boredom and listlessness and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this.
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Beautiful, haunting and chilling. It's visceral.
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The Violinist of Auschwitz
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In Auschwitz, every day is a fight for survival. Alma is inmate 50381, the number tattooed on her skin in pale blue ink. She is cooped up with thousands of others, torn from loved ones, trapped in a maze of barbed wire. Every day people disappear, never to be seen again. This tragic reality couldn’t be further from Alma’s previous life. An esteemed violinist, her performances left her audiences spellbound. But when the Nazis descend on Europe, none of that can save her....
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Emotional
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Pandemic
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In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw is awakened by the phone call she has dreaded for years. As the CDC's leading epidemiologist, she's among the first responders to outbreaks around the world. It's a lonely and dangerous job, but it's her life - and she's good at it. This time she may have met her match. In Kenya, an Ebola-like pathogen has infected two Americans. One lies at death's door. With the clock ticking, Peyton assembles her team and joins personnel from the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the WHO.
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Editor wrecks first words of every chapter!
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Beyond the Tracks
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When the Jewish families of Berlin start disappearing in nightly raids, 21-year-old Jacob Kagan knows it’s only a matter of time before the trucks come for him. Along with his family and best friend, he flees the country he’s always called home to find shelter in a Dutch refugee camp. Before long, the Netherlands falls to the Nazi war machine - Jacob’s new home is transformed into a transit camp with weekly trains bound for the horrors of the Eastern concentration camps.
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I was right there with the characters
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Last Stop Auschwitz
- My Story of Survival from Within the Camp
- Written by: Eddy de Wind
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in the camp itself in the weeks following the Red Army's liberation of the camp, Last Stop Auschwitz is the raw, true account of Eddy's experiences at Auschwitz. In stunningly poetic prose, he provides unparalleled access to the horrors he faced in the concentration camp. This poignant memoir is at once a moving love story, a detailed portrayal of the atrocities of Auschwitz, and an intelligent consideration of the kind of behavior - both good and evil - people are capable of.
Written by: Eddy de Wind
Publisher's Summary
An award-winning, internationally best-selling Holocaust memoir by Max Eisen, in the tradition of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz
In the spring of 1944 gendarmes forcibly removed Tibor “Max” Eisen and his family from their home, brought them to a brickyard, and eventually loaded them onto crowded cattle cars bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. At 15 years of age, Eisen survived the selection process and he was inducted into the camp as a slave laborer.
More than 70 years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, By Chance Alone details Eisen’s story of survival: the backbreaking slave labor in Auschwitz I, the infamous death march in January 1945, the painful aftermath of liberation, and Eisen’s journey of physical and psychological healing. Ultimately, the book offers a message of hope as the author finds his way to a new life.

About the Author
Max Eisen is a Hungarian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944. He is a passionate speaker and educator who volunteers at the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto. He currently resides in Toronto with his wife, Ivy.

About the Narrator
Douglas E. Hughes has been an actor, playwright, and voice artist for the past 40 years. He spent 13 seasons at the Shaw Festival, another three at Stratford, and has worked in theatres across this country and in the U.S.
With his writing partner, Marcia Kash, Hughes has written five plays — all published by Samuel French, Inc. — which have had more than 200 productions in over a dozen countries around the world, and have been translated into eight languages. Hughes and Kash are currently at work on their sixth collaborative effort, a play called Deadline. Doug has also penned a yet-to-be-published novel of his own — a comedy-thriller entitled The Poor Player.
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What listeners say about By Chance Alone
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DD
- 2019-07-25
Heartbreaking
A memoir that needed to be published. Our world must never forget nor deny the horrors that were perpetuated on the Jewish people of the world. Thank you for being so bare to share your life story with new generations.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 2023-04-23
Historical biography
I was very interested in the subject matter but couldn’t get past Chapter 3. It’s more of a history lesson than story telling.
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- Tawnya
- 2022-09-07
An inspirational man
Max was an incredibly inspirational man. He encountered so much evil and difficulty yet was able to overcome so much.
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- Leila
- 2022-06-02
inspired
This book was absolutely worth every minute. I couldn't wait to listen to this audio any chance I got.
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- Angela Pelletier
- 2022-02-16
excellent
everyone should read or listen to this one
especially high school
students studying World War 2
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- J. R.Bianchi
- 2021-01-04
Horrifying and yet a necessary story to hear.
No movie on the Holocaust or WWII has ever given such emotional and revealing of the horror of antisemitism in Europe as this book does. This is a must read (or listen). I am grateful and humbled to hear Max's story of survival. I do fear the same spirit of antisemitism and global totalitarianism is coming back in this century.
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- Sarah Jessica Rintjema
- 2020-09-04
Exceptional
This is the story of a man who has been through the unthinkable. A must read to truly understand the atrocities of The Holocaust.
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- Anonymous User
- 2020-07-29
We human can do all this?
Keep recounting these stories with the hope that these inhumane events won't be repeated.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2020-07-16
A powerful memoir
This book brings the holocaust to life in a way I have not previously experienced. The story is powerful and the narration is excellent. Not easily forgotten, this book deserves to be widely shared. I highly recommend.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2020-07-12
Heartbreaking but very well written!
This book was an excellent descriptive of the life Max lived as a Jew during the years the Nazis rose to power. It is a beautiful account of his family turning to a very difficult read of the time he spent suffering in the camps. I not only learned more about the plight of the Jews but felt this personal account was incredibly touching. Thank you!
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- Suszanne Guymer
- 2019-07-17
A must read
Very well written , but the saddest of stories. May we never forget. One very courageous man.
3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 2022-03-25
triumph! Good over Evil
Every school child should be required to read this incredible journey of survival. My parents lived during this time in history…
I am saddened by the cruelty of humans to humans and also touched deeply by those who kept their compassion towards mankind. This
story will live with me forever .
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- Tawnya
- 2022-02-02
A MUST READ
Max has lived a full life that could have so easily been overshadowed by hate and unhappiness; but his story is one of preserving and ultimately a life of love. Thank you for sharing your story.