
Bruno Schulz
An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History
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
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jamie Renell
-
By:
-
Benjamin Balint
About this listen
The twentieth-century artist Bruno Schulz was born an Austrian, lived as a Pole, and died a Jew. First a citizen of the Habsburg monarchy, he would, without moving, become the subject of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, the Second Polish Republic, the USSR, and, finally, the Third Reich.
Schulz was also a talented illustrator and graphic artist whose masochistic drawings would catch the eye of a sadistic Nazi officer. Schulz's art became the currency in which he bought life.
Benjamin Balint chases the inventive murals Schulz painted on the walls of an SS villa into multiple dimensions of the artist's life and afterlife. Sixty years after Schulz was murdered, those murals were miraculously rediscovered, only to be secretly smuggled by Israeli agents to Jerusalem. The ensuing international furor summoned broader perplexities about who can claim to stand guard over the legacy of Jews killed in the Nazi slaughter.
By recreating the artist's milieu at a crossroads not just of Jewish and Polish culture but of art, sex, and violence, Bruno Schulz itself stands as an act of belated restitution, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of a life with all its paradoxes and curtailed possibilities.
©2023 Benjamin Balint (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Postcard
- By: Anne Berest, Tina Kover - translator
- Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.
-
-
The author’s words deserve a better narrator
- By TK on 05-22-23
By: Anne Berest, and others
-
Homer Box Set: Iliad & Odyssey
- By: Homer, W. H. D. Rouse - translator
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 25 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.
-
-
Oddball Translation
- By Joel Jenkins on 05-11-17
By: Homer, and others
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
The Rigor of Angels
- Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: David Glass
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality.
-
-
The most ridiculous narration
- By Anonymous User on 03-07-24
By: William Egginton
-
The Postcard
- By: Anne Berest, Tina Kover - translator
- Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.
-
-
The author’s words deserve a better narrator
- By TK on 05-22-23
By: Anne Berest, and others
-
Homer Box Set: Iliad & Odyssey
- By: Homer, W. H. D. Rouse - translator
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 25 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.
-
-
Oddball Translation
- By Joel Jenkins on 05-11-17
By: Homer, and others
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
The Rigor of Angels
- Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: David Glass
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality.
-
-
The most ridiculous narration
- By Anonymous User on 03-07-24
By: William Egginton
-
The Best Minds
- A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
- By: Jonathan Rosen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Rosen
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed author Jonathan Rosen’s haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend, Michael Laudor, from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand—and fail to understand—mental illness.
-
-
The Overwhelming Tragedy of Mental Illness
- By Elephants Matter on 12-30-23
By: Jonathan Rosen
-
Thunderclap
- A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death
- By: Laura Cumming
- Narrated by: Laura Cumming
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1654, the Thunderclap—an enormous explosion at a gunpowder store—devasted the city of Delft, killing hundreds of people, including the extraordinary painter Carel Fabritius, and injuring thousands more. Framing the story around the life of Fabritius, Cumming illuminates this extraordinary moment in art history while also writing about her own father, a painter. Like Dutch art, the story gradually links country, city, town, street, house, interior—all the way to the bird on its perch, the blue and white tile, the smallest seed in a loaf of bread.
-
-
The deep dive into Dutch Art
- By toni on 08-06-23
By: Laura Cumming
-
All the Beauty in the World
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
- By: Patrick Bringley
- Narrated by: Patrick Bringley
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamourous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought that he’d be one of them.
-
-
Gallery 771
- By Jonathan Hurst on 06-10-23
By: Patrick Bringley
-
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
- By: Tadeusz Borowski, Barbara Vedder - translator, Michael Kandel - translator
- Narrated by: Roy McCrerey
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion, and prisoners eat, work, and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.
-
-
REQUIRED Reading
- By J.Brock on 06-26-21
By: Tadeusz Borowski, and others
-
Still Life with Bones
- Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains
- By: Alexa Hagerty
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights.
-
-
Disturbing and Hard to Listen To
- By Alain R Gardner on 06-09-23
By: Alexa Hagerty
-
Time's Echo
- The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance
- By: Jeremy Eichler
- Narrated by: Jeremy Eichler, Sherrill Milnes
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.”
-
-
marvelous storytelling
- By Anonymous User on 01-08-25
By: Jeremy Eichler
-
Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
-
-
fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
-
Cosmic Scholar
- The Life and Times of Harry Smith
- By: John Szwed
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry Smith was, in the words of Robert Frank, "the only person I met in my life that transcended everything." In Cosmic Scholar, John Szwed patches together, for the first time, the life of one of the twentieth century's most overlooked cultural figures.
-
-
A Weirdo Worth Your Time
- By Lulu on 09-28-23
By: John Szwed
-
Revolutionary Spring
- Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849
- By: Christopher Clark
- Narrated by: Christopher Clark
- Length: 33 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As history, the uprisings of 1848 have long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848 nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to significant changes that continue to shape our world today. These battles for the future were fought with one eye kept squarely on the past. Revolutionary Spring is a new understanding of 1848 that offers chilling parallels to our present moment.
-
-
Like the revolutions, it got off to a good start
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-23
-
Germany, 1923
- Hyperinflation, Hitler's Pusch and Democracy in Crisis
- By: Volker Ullrich, Jefferson Chase - translator
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Bestselling author Volker Ullrich presents a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced.
-
-
Interesting read about economics
- By molliet on 11-01-23
By: Volker Ullrich, and others
-
Jews Don’t Count
- By: David Baddiel
- Narrated by: David Baddiel
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jews Don’t Count is a book for people who consider themselves on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you. It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel’s contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of close reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes, Baddiel argues that those who think of themselves as on the right side of history have often ignored the history of anti-Semitism.
-
-
Powerful and important and…
- By S. Duck on 09-16-23
By: David Baddiel
-
Assyria
- The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire
- By: Eckart Frahm
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 15 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield.
-
-
Outstanding Historical Book
- By Okahead on 05-15-23
By: Eckart Frahm