Broken Angels

By: Gemma Liviero

Narrated by: Nico Evers-Swindell, Emily Foster

Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

A Nazi doctor. A Jewish rebel. A little girl. Each one will fight for freedom - or die trying.

Imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto, Elsi discovers her mother's desperate attempt to end her pregnancy and comes face-to-face with the impossibility of their situation. Risking her own life, Elsi joins a resistance group to sabotage the regime.

Blonde, blue-eyed Matilda is wrenched from her family in Romania and taken to Germany, where her captors attempt to mold her into the perfect Aryan child. Spirited and brave, she must inspire hope in the other stolen children to make her dreams of escape a reality.

Willem, a high-ranking Nazi doctor, plans to save lives when he takes posts in both the ghetto and Auschwitz. After witnessing unimaginable cruelties, he begins to question his role and the future of those he is ordered to destroy.

While Hitler ransacks Europe in pursuit of a pure German race, the lives of three broken souls - thrown together by chance - intertwine. Only love and sacrifice might make them whole again.

©2016 Gemma Liviero (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

A touching story of

She brought the characters to life and the hard choices felt real. It's always so hard to hear many of these stories of that time but to see people live again with hopes & dreams is inspiring.

Excellent!

Excellent book! The audio performance was also well done.

This book interwove several characters very well and reflected history accurately.

Excellent reading

This is the second of Gemma's books I've read and purposely looked for another to read. Both were very good reads. So much knowledge and information on that time in history which I love. I was very young during WWII, but old enough to have some memories from USA perspective and feel so sorry what atrocities were known of and allowed by our country. Looking forward to another of her books.

Heart wrenching Story, Happy Ending

Much of this book was a heart breaking account of the different levels of suffering the Nazi regime brought. I really liked that it showed suffering people from both sides of the war.

Three lives intertwined by Nazi Atrocities

Elsi's discovery of the aftermath of her mother's desperate attempt to abort an unwanted pregnancy that resulted from her desperate attempt to survive in the Lodz Ghetto led to her decision to join a resistance group. This fateful decision leads to a shocking betrayal that will alter her life in ways she could never imagine.

Willem, a high-ranking Nazi doctor and son of one of Himmler's closest officials, planned to study obstetrics and gynecology in order to save lives when he was in college. Now in the war years, he finds himself thrust into the unsavory role of performing quiet abortions on women Nazi officers have abused and conducting experiments on prisoners in the ghetto and at Auschwitz. In light of what he is forced to do in the line of duty, he is forced to re-examine his entire code of ethics and doesn't like what he sees. He begins secretly helping "the enemy," but his actions will have consequences that will transform his entire life.

Blonde, blue-eyed Matilda is stolen from her family's farm in Romania and taken to a camp to be "re-educated" into a perfect German child. But her inner strength and stubborn streak leads her captors to utilize heinous abuses to break her spirit and bend her to their will.

The stories of all three people are brilliantly intertwined in this heartbreaking historical novel about Nazi Germany. I have read many accounts of Nazi atrocities, all of them tragic, but what makes Broken Angels unique is its focus on the devastating consequences the war had on Jewish women and displaced children. Liviero does a particularly impressive job capturing the voice of a scared child in the passages narrated from Matilda's point of view. The details of the abuses these women and children suffered are difficult to hear, as the accounts are honest and blunt--often brutally so--but the details are important both historically and to the story. It is not just gratuitous violence. It is important that we remember the horrors the Nazi regime inflicted upon their victims if we are to properly honor the spirit of the dead and the strength of the survivors.

I listened to this book on audible, and I have to add that the performance quality of this book was outstanding. The narrators added a depth of feeling to the first-person accounts that enhanced the story greatly, and I think lending their voices to the book made it easier for the listener to transition from narrator to narrator as the story progressed.

A Different Window into WWII

This book will tug your heart in so many different directions. I cried and cried and cried for William, Elsi and Matilda. This is the story of the redemption of a man who wasn't able to choose his path until the end and the woman and child he saved. They taught him to love. I hope your heart is tugged as much as mine.

Very interesting

There was great narration in this book. It was a riveting story of war time Germany. Unexpected ending. Really good!

Good story

I have to admit that I had trouble putting this one on pause to do the things I was supposed to do. Very well done.

The best

I haven’t listened to a book that was this moving in months. It is excellent! The readers read so well that you can even picture what was going on in your mind as you were listening to it even if you were doing something else at the time

loved this book.

I loved this book as well as Pastel Orphans. At times I felt like crying for the characters in this book. The author brought to life the atrocities the German people did to the Jewish people. I will listen again and with my grandchildren. We should never forget.