Playing for the Commandant
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Playing for the Commandant
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Narrated by:
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Emily Foster
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By:
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Suzy Zail
About this listen
A young Jewish pianist at Auschwitz, desperate to save her family, is chosen to play at the camp commandant's house. How could she know she would fall in love with the wrong boy?
"Look after each other… and get home safe. And when you do, tell everyone what you saw and what they did to us."
These are Hanna's father's parting words to her and her sister when their family is separated at the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Her father's words - and a black C-sharp piano key hidden away in the folds of her dress - are all that she has left to remind her of life before. Before, Hanna was going to be a famous concert pianist. She was going to wear her yellow dress to a dance. And she was going to dance with a boy. But then the Nazis came. Now it is up to Hanna to do all she can to keep her mother and sister alive, even if that means playing piano for the commandant and his guests. Staying alive isn't supposed to include falling in love with the commandant's son. But Karl Jager is beautiful, and his aloofness belies a secret. And war makes you do dangerous things.
©2012 Suzy Zail, first U.S. edition published by Candlewick Press. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story5 out of 5 stars 304
"I do not hate. To hate is to let Hitler win." - Rena Kornreich Gelissen. On March 26, 1942, the first mass transport of Jews - 999 young women - arrived in Auschwitz. Among them was Rena Kornreich, the 716th woman numbered in camp. A few days later, her sister Danka arrives and so begins a trial of love and courage that will last three years and 41 days, from the beginning Auschwitz death camp to the end of the war.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Content / Horrible Production
- By Simone on 07-23-15
By: Rena Kornreich Gelissen, and others
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 697
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 602
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Story4 out of 5 stars 592
The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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The Good Thief
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 94
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Story4 out of 5 stars 96
Twelve-year-old Ren doesn't know who his parents were. He doesn't know who left him at St. Anthony's orphanage, or how he lost his left hand when still an infant. He is resigned to life without a family to call his own and terrified of the future. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents is enough to persuade the monks at the orphanage to release the boy. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Close But No Cigar?
- By Andrew Moore on 10-03-09
By: Hannah Tinti
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 638
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 570
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 568
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The Seamstress
- By: Sara Tuvel Bernstein, Louise Loots Thornton, Marlene Bernstein Samuels
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,822
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,656
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,645
Told with the same old-fashioned narrative power as the novels of Herman Wouk, The Seamstress is the true story of Seren (Sara) Tuvel Bernstein and her survival during wartime. This powerful eyewitness account of survival, told with power and grace, will stay with listeners for years to come.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Overcome with Emotion
- By Meryl on 05-16-13
By: Sara Tuvel Bernstein, and others
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The Devil's Arithmetic
- By: Jane Yolen
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 463
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 383
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 389
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and an American Bookseller "Pick of the Lists", The Devil's Arithmetic plunges the listener into the terrible realities of the Nazi concentration camps. Chaya's tale is a celebration of the strength of the human spirit and a dramatic introduction to the darkest period of modern history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of my favorite books
- By Savannah Cassen &Maisie on 02-20-16
By: Jane Yolen
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The Red Ribbon
- By: Lucy Adlington
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Rose, Ella, Marta and Carla. In another life we might all have been friends together. But this was Birchwood. As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful story of hope
- By m.webster on 08-04-24
By: Lucy Adlington
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Orphan Number Eight
- A Novel
- By: Kim van Alkemade
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt, Ginny Auer
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 377
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 331
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Story4 out of 5 stars 330
In 1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in a crowded tenement on New York City's Lower East Side. When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother, Sam, and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Stopped after a few hours
- By Tamara on 01-03-20
By: Kim van Alkemade
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Sold
- By: Patricia McCormick
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,798
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,589
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,582
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfectly Haunting....
- By Theodore on 01-13-13
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The Disappearances
- By: Emily Bain Murphy
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Aila Quinn's mother, Juliet, has always been a mystery. Vibrant yet guarded, she keeps her secrets beyond Aila's reach. When Juliet dies, Aila and her younger brother, Miles, are sent to live in Sterling, a rural town with mysteries of its own. In Sterling, the experiences that weave life together - scents of flowers and food, reflections from mirrors and lakes, even the ability to dream - vanish every seven years. No one knows what causes these Disappearances or what will slip away next.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Always
- By Lisa Gay on 09-09-17
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A Woman in Berlin
- Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
- By: Anonymous, Philip Boehm - translator
- Narrated by: Isabel Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 282
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 251
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Story5 out of 5 stars 249
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject—the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Interesting
- By northwoods woman on 06-25-20
By: Anonymous, and others
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Someone Named Eva
- By: Joan M. Wolff
- Narrated by: Rachel Botchan
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
M. Wolf traveled to the Czech Republic, birthplace of her great-grandmother, for further insight into this remarkable story. Someone Named Eva is the devastating tale of a young girl whose identity is threatened by the allconsuming sweep of Nazi aggression. Before she loses everything, Milada is a normal, happy girl. But then come the Nazis, tearing her from her family’s arms and leaving her with little but her grandmother’s lingering words: “Remember who you are.”
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4 out of 5 stars
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It was good
- By S. R. Jordan on 02-20-24
By: Joan M. Wolff
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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
- By: Leslye Walton
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 449
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 402
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Story4 out of 5 stars 400
Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful and Haunting Fairytale
- By FanB14 on 07-24-15
By: Leslye Walton
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The War Girls
- By: V. S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Kelli Tager
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 154
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 141
It's not just a thousand miles that separates Hanna Majewski from her younger sister, Stefa. There is another gulf—between the traditional Jewish ways that Hanna chose to leave behind in Warsaw, and her new, independent life in London. But as autumn of 1940 draws near, Germany begins a savage aerial bombing campaign in England, killing and displacing tens of thousands. Hanna, who narrowly escapes death, is recruited as a spy in an undercover operation that sends her back to her war-torn homeland.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Courageous Sisters
- By Sara on 08-10-22
By: V. S. Alexander
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Promise
- A Novel
- By: Minrose Gwin
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 60
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart - one Black, one White; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager - fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Mostly Disappointing
- By Anjoli on 06-15-19
By: Minrose Gwin
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Jerusalem Maiden
- By: Talia Carner
- Narrated by: Lise Bruneau
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, a young Orthodox Jewish woman in the holy city of Jerusalem is expected to marry and produce many sons to help hasten the Messiah's arrival. While the feisty Esther Kaminsky understands her obligations, her artistic talent inspires her to secretly explore worlds outside her religion, to dream of studying in Paris - and to believe that God has a special destiny for her. When tragedy strikes her family, Esther views it as a warning from an angry God....
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4 out of 5 stars
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No dreaming, No painting, No thinking . . .
- By Debbie on 04-18-15
By: Talia Carner
What listeners say about Playing for the Commandant
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 09-24-20
awesome 👍 great book!
great book! loved it! I would have preferred a primary source,but it was good nonetheless!
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