2 Books in 1
As you tune in to the heartfelt narrations of two compelling audiobooks, Refuge and From Fear to Freedom, you’ll explore the intimate true-life stories of Liane Guddat Brown’s autobiographies.
This auditory journey is more than a passive listening experience; it’s designed to faithfully teach that God is a refuge to those striving to move from fear to freedom. Using her personal story of how her family found Christ relevant during wartime, Liane inspires eager listeners to find Jesus as their all-sufficient source of strength.
Refuge
Thousands of stories have been told about the deprivation and horror of the Second World War, but there is one aspect that has received comparatively little attention: the story of those who lost the same war twice, the people of Germany. Not the military, the Nazis, or the government itself, but the villagers, the grandparents, the wives, and the children—the people who had little more control over their future than did the victims of the concentration camps.
The Third Reich of Germany, in its corruption and despotism, subjected many of its own people to terrible abuse before it began to crumble, abandoning them to a new kind of holocaust. Those who lived in the western part of the country had the hope, at least, of rebuilding lives for themselves after 1945, but those in the east who came under Russian control soon found that the struggle had only begun.
In this book, Liane Guddat Brown recounts sixteen months of her life as a young German girl under Russian occupation in an area that is now part of Poland. Those in her little family were the last representatives of a town of two thousand residents. All others had been murdered, forced to flee, or starved to death. Despite brutal treatment and harsh conditions, the Guddats survived, escaped, and reunited their family, bringing with them to the free world a compelling story of God's marvelous grace.
From Fear to Freedom
Hitler had lost the war. His loyalists sought hiding in foreign countries. The Nuernberg trials exposed their devilish deeds to a shocked world. At Potsdam the Allies divided the Fatherland into four zones as Germans, hated by all nations, began rebuilding their devastated land.
There have been few reports about the suffering Germans had to endure after the war. The peace treaty, while giving hope to the West Germans, did not alleviate suffering for millions of East German refugees, forced from their homes by the Soviets. Starving and exhausted, few survived the treks during the harsh winter. Bodies of all ages littered frozen ditches, a toll of the elements and a sacrifice of Naziism which most of them had not supported.
Emmy Guddat and her four children managed to arrive in the West despite near starvation and bodies riddled with boils only to move from one refugee camp to another. With God's help she had survived sixteen months of communism as told in the award-winning book "Refuge." With His help she would also survive the abusive West Germans who considered refugees scum and dirt. God preserved the entire family, including the father whose whereabouts were not known for over three years.
In this true account, Liane Guddat Brown completes a bridge between the Berlin refugee camp, the place where her first book "Refuge" ends, and the new home in the United States of America. The span is replete with starvation, heartache, fear, and search for relatives and freedom.
Liane Brown
author and narrator
As a ten-year-old girl, Liane Guddat watched Hitler’s motorcade pass by their home in Insterburg, East Prussia. Within a few short months, Insterburg was smoldering in ruins when Mutti (Liane’s mother) and her four children scrambled over bricks, broken glass, and scorched beams as they tried to escape the ravages of WWII. Although not a Nazi, Liane’s father had been drafted into the German army and became a prisoner of war.
In her award-winning books, Liane Guddat Brown proclaims God’s sustaining grace proven through a family torn apart by war. “We still thank the Lord for bringing us to America,” she says. “For it was only by His grace that we survived at all, and even more, that we would be allowed to live among the most privileged people in the world.”
Curriculum
- The Back Cover of Refuge
- Front Matter Including Pronunciation of German Words
- Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End
- Chapter 2: Cross Fire!
- Chapter 3: New Troubles
- Chapter 4: Enemy in the Camp
- Chapter 5: Scavengers
- Chapter 6: The Eye of the Storm
- Chapter 7: Home Again
- Chapter 8: Times of Testing
- Chapter 9: The Deadly Disease
- Chapter 10: Onkel Lehmann
- Chapter 11: The First Attempt
- Chapter 12: Advent
- Chapter 13: Capture
- Chapter 14: Nothing but Trust
- Chapter 15: Miracle for Mutti
- Chapter 16: The Russian Jail
- Chapter 17: Improvements
- Chapter 18: Tickets to Freedom
- Chapter 19: Escape