The book of the month for April 2020 is Hanna Miley’s new audio book! Her powerful memoir, A Garland for Ashes, has just been released as an audio book.
Here is the publisher’s summary of the book:
Torn from her homeland...her parents murdered.... How could she cope?
When little Hannelore (Hanna) Zack left Cologne, Germany, on a train bound for London as a seven-year-old mädchen (young girl) on July 24, 1939, 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 by granting them safe passage to England. In the coming years, Hanna would learn the painful truth: After being stripped of their business, forced from their Zuhause (home), and deported to endure six months of inhumane conditions in the Lodz Ghetto, her parents were gassed in a brutally efficient killing operation in a remote, forested area near Chelmno, Poland, on May 3, 1942.
Written over a four-year period beginning when Hanna was about 75 years old, 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.
Here is the review I posted on Audible:
Stories from the Holocaust are so important, so as to not forget what happened, and what could happen again. But this story ... this story should be next on your list.
Why? It offers a beautiful example of how to respond when terrible events happen in our lives. Heaven forbid we have to deal with something on the level of the Holocaust again - but all of us have ways in which we have suffered loss, betrayal, and hidden darkness. A Garland For Ashes not only recounts the history in a precise and powerful manner, but lays out the process of forgiveness and reconciliation that Hanna went through as she wrestled with these memories and the powerful emotions that they evoked in her soul.
In terms of production, I haven't listened to too many audio books (I generally prefer to read visually), but this one is really good. The narrator outstanding (apparently her father also escaped the Holocaust). The violin music in the opening was like a musical interpretation of Hanna's story.
Highly recommended!