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Hiding in the Spotlight

A Musical Prodigy's Story of Survival: 1941-1946

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Hiding in the Spotlight

By: Greg Dawson
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, Kevin Pariseau
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About this listen

The extraordinary story of a young girl whose musical genius saves her from the Holocaust.

By the age of six, Zhanna had developed a repertoire fellow students twice her age would envy. Scholarships to the most prestigious conservatories in the Soviet Union soon followed - conservatories that had produced legends like Rachmaninoff, Kogan, and Horowitz.

In 1941, disaster strikes. The Nazi Army is smashing through the Ukraine en route to Moscow. Zhanna and her family are to be executed alongside thousands of others in the ravines of Drobitsky Yar. A few short miles from certain death, her father bribes a nearby guard, and she escapes into the forest with only the clothes on her back, a copy of Chopin’s Fantasy Impromptu in her pocket, and her father’s parting words echoing in her head: “I don’t care what you do, just live.”

Adopting a new identity and ever fearful of recognition, Zhanna roamed the ravaged countryside. One lonely evening, the head of a local Nazi battalion hears her play. He is so taken with her exquisite interpretation of Chopin that little Zhanna soon becomes the performing darling of the Nazi forces.

©2009 Greg Dawson (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Entertainment & Celebrities Music World Celebrity Piano

Editor reviews

Be sure to keep the tissues handy when you're ready to listen to this inspiring, true story from one of modern Europe's darkest times. In the midst of all the violence and death caused by the Nazi army, comes the impossible story of a young musical prodigy and her will to survive. Hiding in the Spotlight, performed with a captivating delivery by veteran Suzanne Toren, is the amazing story of young Zhanna Arshankaya as she fled certain death and survived using her unparalleled ability to play piano.
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To try and imagine 10 and 12 year old girls sent out on their own in the hellish WW2
and then wrap your head around the journey to America and the lives thereafter is beyond me....what an amazing story...so humbling.

Amazing strength and courage...

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memoir story of what they had to deal with during World War II. The narrator was very good.

An amazing....

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Really fantastic true story, all about how two young Ukrainian sisters managed to survive being murdered along with their parerents and grandprerents by the Nazis, which was the start of the Holocast.

Fantastic story

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This was an audible plus and as it is an interest of mine I just had to listen to it.

This is a really interesting book and tells some really different stories of this era which given the amount of books in the public arena that is a surprise and enlightening. The sisters went through harrowing events and one sister couldnt even talk about how she escaped.

It is not the best written book as there are duplications but I ignored them and just escaped into the book as it was so harrowing and not an easy listen.

Really interesting listen

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I chose this book because I have a similar story in my family history. I felt the author was more concerned with painting a glowing portrait of his supposedly perfect mother than giving an authentic account. The writing is of poor quality lurching between different styles and viewpoints. Is it a novel, a very subjective biography, a historical account or a political rant from the perspective of a capitalist American? The writing changes abruptly from first person to third person with occasional third party interventions. Confusing. It feels like the book was built from the nostalgic ramblings of an ageing woman and we all know that memory is a fickle affair. I did not enjoy this book and couldn’t bear to finish it due to boredom and irritation.

Disappointing

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