Mistress of Life and Death
The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau
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Mistress of Life and Death
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Narrated by:
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Elisabeth Lagelee
About this listen
The first-ever biography of SS Overseer Maria Mandl, the highest-ranked woman in the Nazi killing machine and one of the few female perpetrators of the Holocaust.
By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands.
In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as "a nice girl from a good family," came to embody the very worst of humanity. Born in 1912 in the scenic Austrian village of Münzkirchen, Maria enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents—who later watched in anguish as their grown daughter rose through the Nazi system.
For two decades, Eischeid has excavated the details of Mandl's life story, drawing on archival testimonies, speaking to dozens of witnesses, and spending time with Mandl's community of friends and neighbors who shared their memories as well as those handed down in their families. The result is a chilling and complex exploration of how easily an ordinary citizen chose the path of evil in a climate of hate and fear.
©2024 Susan J. Eischeid (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story5 out of 5 stars 105
Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realizing what this entailed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book
- By Rodney on 03-14-23
By: Shlomo Venezia
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Rescued from the Ashes
- The Diary of Leokadia Schmidt, Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto
- By: Leokadia Schmidt, Oscar E. Swan - translator
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
The diary of a young Jewish housewife who, together with her husband and five-month-old baby, fled the Warsaw ghetto at the last possible moment, and survived the Holocaust hidden on the "Aryan" side of town in the loft of a run-down tinsmith's shed. Rescued from the Ashes documents the incredible life story of Leokadia Schmidt and her small family and their daily struggle to survive the Warsaw Ghetto.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing details
- By Holly H on 12-11-24
By: Leokadia Schmidt, and others
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Cold Crematorium
- Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
- By: József Debreczeni, Paul Olchváry - translator, Jonathan Freedland
- Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 129
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Story5 out of 5 stars 129
József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944; had he been selected to go “left,” his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the “lucky” ones, he was sent to the “right,” which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labor in a series of camps, ending in the “Cold Crematorium”—the so-called hospital of the forced labor camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Learned so much more about the Holocaust
- By Jerseygirl on 02-03-24
By: József Debreczeni, and others
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The Survivor
- How I Made it Through Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter
- By: Josef Lewkowicz
- Narrated by: Price Waldman
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story5 out of 5 stars 40
When Nazi forces entered Kraków, Poland in 1939, unexpected and unresisted, Josef Lewkowicz's life became a nightmare overnight as he and his family were rounded up and sent to concentration camps across German-occupied territory. It wasn't long before Josef found himself face-to-face with SS kommandant Amon Goeth, whose brutality was made infamous by the film Schindler's List. As Josef struggled to survive the violence, horror, and degradations of one prison camp after another—he was kept alive only by his faith and his profound sense of justice.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The honesty & accuracy of this Holocaust survivor!
- By SMD on 05-13-25
By: Josef Lewkowicz
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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
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 299
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 261
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Story5 out of 5 stars 263
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story with an added benefit
- By Scottsville Stu on 12-30-21
By: Rebecca Frankel
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The Master of Auschwitz:
- Memoirs of Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant SS
- By: Rudolf Hoess
- Narrated by: Tim Dalgleish
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 319
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 291
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 290
The first-hand account of the life, career, and the practices of horror at Auschwitz, written by Auschwitz Kommandant SS Rudolf Hoss as he awaited execution for his crimes. Including his psychological interviews at Nuremberg.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Banality of Evil…a Memoir
- By Tim on 03-16-17
By: Rudolf Hoess
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All the Horrors of War
- A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen
- By: Bernice Lerner
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
On April 15, 1945, Brigadier H. L. Glyn Hughes entered Bergen-Belsen for the first time. Waiting for him were 10,000 unburied, putrefying corpses and 60,000 living prisoners, starving and sick. One month earlier, 15-year-old Rachel Genuth arrived at Bergen-Belsen; deported with her family from Sighet, Transylvania, in May of 1944, Rachel had by then already endured Auschwitz, the Christianstadt labor camp, and a forced march through the Sudetenland.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Definitely must listen to
- By Misti on 08-10-23
By: Bernice Lerner
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Empire of Destruction
- A History of Nazi Mass Killing
- By: Alex J. Kay
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 12
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Story5 out of 5 stars 12
Nazi Germany killed approximately 13 million civilians and other noncombatants in deliberate policies of mass murder, overwhelmingly during the war years. Almost half the victims were Jewish, systematically destroyed in the Holocaust, the core of the Nazis’ pan-European racial purification program. Alex Kay argues that the genocide of European Jewry can also be examined in the wider context of Nazi mass killing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bleak, terrifying. Plumbs the depths
- By Dr Philip N Best on 11-22-22
By: Alex J. Kay
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Beyond the Last Path
- A Buchenwald Survivor's Story
- By: Eugene Weinstock
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story5 out of 5 stars 51
This is the story of No. 22483, who had been shipped from Belgium to Buchenwald. It records what he saw and felt during his calvary from Antwerp to the Malin distribution camp in France and from there to the extermination camp of Buchenwald. He was one of the few people who both entered a Nazi concentration camp and left again. This is his remarkable personal story that records his experiences of one of the most harrowing events in human history.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Is it a testimony, or a work of fiction?
- By Noa on 01-01-20
By: Eugene Weinstock
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Sabina
- In the Eye of the Storm
- By: Bella Kuligowska Zucker
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
This is the memoir written by Bella Kuligowska Zucker, the only person in her family to survive the Holocaust. In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. After loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. After finding the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Alone without family
- By Nancy F. on 04-17-25
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Nazi Wives
- The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
- By: James Wyllie
- Narrated by: Dalya Raphael
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 170
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Scary
- By Three River on 05-15-21
By: James Wyllie
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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
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story5 out of 5 stars 45
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Extraordinary courage.
- By Alice@Wonderland on 10-01-24
By: Magda Hellinger, and others
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
- By: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 488
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 451
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Story5 out of 5 stars 450
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very interesting and well told
- By Tracy F. on 03-31-23
By: Tova Friedman, and others
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Nazi Women
- The Attraction of Evil
- By: Paul Roland
- Narrated by: Gabrielle Glaister
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
After the failure of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis believed their mission was to "masculinize" life in Germany. Hermann Goering told women, "Take a pot, a dustpan and a broom, and marry a man", but many still became active participants in murder and mayhem. From the Reich Bride Schools through the Bund Deutscher Mädel and the bizarre Lebensborn Aryan breeding programme to the brothels of the Sicherheitsdienst, this book covers the lives of women in the Third Reich, concentrating on those who sought personal power and influence amid the chaos.
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3 out of 5 stars
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People are human
- By Stephen H on 07-04-18
By: Paul Roland
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First One In, Last One Out
- Auschwitz Survivor 31321: A Memoir
- By: Marilyn Shimon
- Narrated by: Sarah Borges
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
The horrifying true story of one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz. Growing up in New York, Marilyn Shimon often visited her uncle in California. She saw his scars, gaped at his 31321 tattoo and listened to his horrific stories of surviving the Holocaust. However, she could not relate to the suffering he endured or understand the significance of his accounts until now.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Horrible narrator
- By Rachel Comegys on 09-06-24
By: Marilyn Shimon
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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
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 251
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A Miss
- By FritzFamily on 10-06-21
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The Girl in the Green Sweater
- A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow
- By: Krystyna Chiger, Daniel Paisner - contributor
- Narrated by: Romy Nordlinger
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing, and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the 14 months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Irritating Narration
- By william on 09-05-22
By: Krystyna Chiger, and others
The narrator however often sounded like AI. Very robotic at times like Siri.
Narration was rough…
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Riveting & sorrowful
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How we are all capable of evil
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Wow!
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