Near the Danube Bridge

A Story of Faith, Courage, and Endurance

By: Catherine Allen-Walters

Narrated by: Charlie Brogan

Length: 8 hrs

Publisher's summary

1st place winner of the Pencraft Book Awards for best audio book in 2024!

Kalman Hartig (1930-2021) was born into an affluent family in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He was exposed to music, art, and literature at a young age. After joining the American Seventh-day Adventist movement that had been sweeping through war-torn Europe, he discovered how difficult life would be living in what would become communist Yugoslavia while adhering to his religious beliefs. He was sentenced to two years hard labor for being a conscientious objector. He drew from his knowledge of Bible stories and classical music works to preserve his sanity and his life. After surviving the cruelty of the labor camps, he naively believed that he had proved his faith to God. Little did he know what new challenges lay ahead. His wife, Hermina (Minka) Kirchner, experienced her own war horrors as a child. Kalman and Minka and their children escaped the communist regime. Together they struggled, loved, and healed.

©2024 Elisabeth Hartig Lentulo (P)2024 Elisabeth Hartig Lentulo

Near the Danube Bridge was a great read

I really enjoyed the story of the family. I love their story of how they developed their relationship with God.

A story of conscience over cruelty

This book came out during a time when we see rising totalitarianism again in the West manifesting as an impulse on both the so-called Left and Right of the political spectrum toward restricting the expression of personal and religious conscience and free speech, all the while cloaked in the rhetoric of protecting and promoting the greater good.

We see a major land war once again erupting between nation-states on the European continent. That’s not unusual, considering human history, but it’s all the more worrisome since we had imagined we had moved beyond all that for the at least the past 35 years.

So, it’s good we read a story to recall a time not all that long ago when Classic Liberal sentiments regarding freedom of religion and of expression were set aside by utopianism and reductionist politics. It’s a human story that speaks to the struggle to hold one’s head up under trying circumstances.

I found the narration to be smooth and easy to follow

Engaging storyline!

It must have been incredibly challenging for the authors to weave together this narrative given that is was written after almost all of the people mentioned had passed. But they did a great job conveying the intensity of religious persecution in Europe during WW2 and afterwards and the audio book narrator conveyed it well!