Survivor Biography

When Leah Cik Roth decides to write memoirs for her children, writer Menucha Meinstein walks into her life as a volunteer. The two develop the deepest of human bonds as together they uncover Leah's lifelong bitterness and suppressed Holocaust memories. Through soul writing, they struggle to relive Leah's stories, revealing heroic patterns of resilience from the young age of five. Her memories bring out fresh pain and renewed feelings of loss and loneliness. The Holocaust is merely a backdrop to Leah's life. Together, the two women share joy in the legacy that Leah leaves for the world.

In this moving memoir, Joy Clausen Soto vividly brings us into her world. We see her go from her dream job to fighting for her life, and how she is able to come back from it all. You can't avoid falling in love with her quirks, indomitable spirit, and wry sense of humor. Soto takes listeners on a compelling journey as she faces cancer and the challenges she encounters while re-entering "normal" life.

Louis and Jenni Böhm were a middle-class Jewish couple who established a thriving business and raised a family in a small country town in Upper Silesia in 1885. The book follows the fortunes of the family over a period of 70 years, during which their peaceful and prosperous existence is gradually eroded as they are forced to suffer increasing humiliation and ostracisation under the Nazi regime imposed on pre-war Germany by Adolf Hitler.

In this intimate and insightful audiobook, Melissa Doyle shares the stories of some of the most resilient people she has ever met, gently drawing out their wisdom, empathy and heartfelt practical advice for anyone who’s going through a difficult time. When the world stopped turning in 2020, award-winning journalist Melissa Doyle had already been thrown off course by life. She’d just turned 50, her eldest child had finally left home to study overseas and her 25-year-long career as a popular presenter at Channel 7 had come to an end.

More than 200 stories of killers, con artists, master thieves, and brazen kidnappers—and strong survivors, detectives, forensic breakthroughs, and legal minds on all sides of the action. In other words, a mini-encyclopedia perfect for newcomers and hard-core crime fans alike. Here are the big names—Bundy, Manson, Berkowitz, Borden, and the Black Dahlia. The lingering mysteries—like JonBenet Ramsey and Natalie Wood. The disturbing puzzle of the Zodiac Killer. The true story behind the most lurid headline ever: “Headless Body in the Topless Bar.” And more.

Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.

“Don’t cry darling. We need this baby. You will see.” With these words from her husband, Zoltán, Ibolya Rechnitzer’s fear of being pregnant during the uncertainty of wartime is somewhat eased. But in November 1942, four months after their baby, Andy, is born, Zoltán is drafted into the forced labour service of the Hungarian army and Ibolya must cope, alone, as a single mother and a Jew facing persecution in Budapest. Her son gives her a reason to fight, and Ibolya protects him fiercely during the war and after, when she must make a crucial decision that will forever alter their lives.

Born into a Hassidic Jewish family in Poland in 1924, Mendek grew up surrounded by extreme anti-Semitism. Armed with an ingenious mind, he survived three horrific years in Nazi slave-labor concentration camps while virtually his entire family was murdered in Auschwitz. After arriving in America in 1946 — despite having no money or professional skills — his inventions helped revolutionize both the jewelry and packaged-salad industries. Remarkably, Mendek also applied his ingenuity to his own psyche, developing innovative ways to heal his heart and end his emotional suffering.

Sexual abuse by her father from the time she was four until she left home at 17. Then marriage to a brutal husband who raped and beat her. Another secret. This is the story of Sarah's journey to forgiveness of self and her perpetrators to self-love and self-realization, a long and arduous process.

An inspiring account from one of history’s darkest moments. Marione Ingram grew up in Hamburg, Germany, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She was German. She was Jewish. She was a survivor. This is her story. As a young girl, Marione was aware that people of the Jewish faith were regarded as outsiders, the supposed root of Germany’s many problems. She grew up in an apartment building where neighbors were more than happy to report Jews to the Gestapo.

Mais do que judeu, Eddie Jaku sempre se considerou alemão. Ele sentia orgulho do seu país natal. Mas, em novembro de 1938, tudo mudou: dez nazistas invadiram sua casa e o espancaram quase até a morte. Naquela noite, que ficou conhecida para sempre na história como a Noite dos Cristais, Eddie foi preso e levado a um campo de concentração.

“Discharged from a hospital just means you’re not dead.” These words of Ralph B. Lilly, M.D., describe his early struggle to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Lilly was a forty-four-year-old practicing neurologist sitting on his motorcycle at a red light when a drunk driver rear-ended him in 1980. In the ICU, after regaining consciousness and being told what happened, he asked, “What’s a hospital? What’s a motorcycle?” This tragic experience transformed his life and his approach to his neurology practice: doctors treat those with brain injury; but loved ones heal them.

When little Hannelore Zack left Cologne, Germany, on a train bound for London as a seven-year-old mädchen (young girl), she had no way of knowing that she was part of the Kindertransport, an epic rescue effort that would save 10,000 Jewish children from Hitler's Nazi regime. Written over a four-year period, A Garland for Ashes is both a gripping detective story recounting the heartbreaking process of discovering her family's fate and a poignant account of her journey from vengeful hatred to forgiveness and release from bitterness.

Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.

Have you ever been told that you can’t do something, even if that something is your dream? Mohammed Yousuf’s Ascending Adversity will prove to you that you can.

In 2018, fourteen-year-old Claire Sarnowski stood with ninety-two-year-old Alter Wiener in front of the Oregon state senate to champion a cause the two friends both believed in: making Holocaust education mandatory in their state’s public school curriculum. Theirs was an unexpected friendship—she was in elementary school when they met, and he was an aging Holocaust survivor whose memoir she had read—and together they were going to change the American education system.

Dear Kobe is horrific, tragic, inspirational, and miraculous. It stands as an important reminder of how precious freedom is and how carefully it should be guarded.

A story ultimately without a time and ultimately without a place. It's a memoir of families across generations of peace and of war, of homes that become lost and hopes that are kept, and a belief in a future that's better than the present. In each family, a fundamental life event spawns ripples that sweep across time and generations that would fade forever without exploration and would otherwise shed all meaning. The key event in many lives is making the decision to leave home forever and to strike out, not knowing if it leads to disaster or to a future and a better place.

When Brother Nathan was a child in Egypt, he witnessed the unthinkable - his own father's murder at the hands of terrorists. At first he struggled with his powerful urge to seek revenge against his father's assassins. Today he ministers in the very village where his father was killed as well as in countless other cities and villages across Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

As a deeply authentic and heartfelt collection of harrowing true stories and reflections on sexual trauma, Echoes is a powerful anthology that seeks to shed light on the painful reality faced by male survivors of sexual abuse, along with the lasting mental and emotional scars that so many men carry with them. Compiling dozens of poignant real-life accounts, this groundbreaking book will open the hearts and minds of listeners, offering male survivors a safe place to find solace from their pain and begin building a road map on their journey to wholeness.