Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in History

Laurence Rees, in his magnum opus, combines largely unpublished testimony with the latest academic research to create the first accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust in over three decades. Rees argues that whilst hatred of the Jews was always at the epicentre of Nazi thinking - and the Holocaust was the most appalling crime in history - what happened cannot be fully understood without considering the murder of the Jews alongside other Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well.

In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was seized by the Nazis. Along with his teenage son, Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in. When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz, a certain death sentence, Fritz refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive: the love between father and son.

Selma van de Perre was 17 when World War Two began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had been of no consequence. But by 1941 this simple fact had become a matter of life or death. Several times, Selma avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. Then, in an act of defiance, she joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years 'Marga' risked it all.

Count Moïse de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal's forebears, the Ephrussi, first encountered in his best-selling memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes. Like the Ephrussi, the Camondos were part of Belle Epoque high society. They were also targets of anti-Semitism. Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with the greatest private collection of French 18th-century art for his son to inherit. But when Nissim was killed in the First World War, it became a memorial and, on the Count's death, was bequeathed to France.

June 1942. The Third Reich is victorious everywhere. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who escaped to Britain just before the War. Many have lost their families, their homes - their whole worlds. And now, in the crucial final battles against the Nazis, they will stop at nothing to defeat them. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop.