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- Verified Buyer
Lengthy descriptions have already been tackled by other reviewers, so I will state here that Ms Moorehead's ability as a non-fiction chronicler of people is fantastic. She writes with passion and heart, tackling the subject matter of this book which is heartbreaking and horrifying, yet makes us admire the women who are the subject of this book. Although difficult, she does not write of the Nazi and particularly SS participants with finger pointed and voice raised, for to do so would have detracted from the story of the women and done them a great injustice. Instead she is a dispassionate chronicler of their crimes, stating facts but not judging, and it makes this account of their crimes all the more powerful.A few reviewers took issue with the fact that it chronicled the lives of the mostly Communist members of the Resistance but to recount the stories of all French women sent to camps would have been an unwieldy and massive book. Instead she took a specific group of women, the convoy of the 31000, whose survivors chronicled their journey from resistant to concentration camp survivor and whose testimony makes up the bones of this book.This book is a memorial to their lives, to the solidarity of the women who used everything at their disposal to survive and bear witness to the atrocities that were their lives for 27 months. The very fact that around 30% of these women DID survive is extraordinary, and they did it through subterfuge and strength of character, and a solidarity in their love of country and each other.Most people reading stories about the camps usually believe that once survivors were able to be home, things were better for them, however, this was not entirely the case except in the sense that their daily suffering was eliminated. Even while they were in the camps and before repatriation to France, the survivors heard that the very people who were the collaborators of the worst kind were already in power in France for the reconstruction government, and after prosecuting and/or executing a mere handful of the worst of the worst, a war-weary France decided that this all had to be forgotten. De Gaulle pushed for moving on and France did, sweeping the stories and lives of the survivors into a corner. Partly this was political, but a lot of it was shame that France's capitulation and complicity in crimes against their own countrymen was so widespread. To have been shoved aside in this manner must have been a terrible betrayal for these survivors.The women who suffered so terribly for what they believed, even, in some cases, far worse than the men, were ignored until very recently. The men in the resistance, living in a man's world, received the praise and honours, the women little to nothing. They came back to empty homes that had been ransacked, where their entire families were wiped out, to memories so terrible that they never recovered, to such poor health that they died only a few years after returning. And to paraphrase Charlotte Delbo, none of them ever returned. They were spectres who had left their lives, their health, their youth, and their tears in Birkenau and Ravensbruck and Mauthausen.If you speak French, you may be interested to see Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier's extraordinary testimony at Nuremberg: on youtube. Marie-Claude's powerful voice filled the room while on the witness stand: she relates horror after horror, and although her voice sometimes falters she was a devastating witness for the prosecution. If you do not speak French, there is also Charlotte Gainsbourg's condensed interpretation of Marie-Claude from the film "Nuremberg" in English on youtube or in the film NurembergThis book is not easy to read, but it will resonate with you long after you put it down, and you will not regret it.I also highly recommend the following:Charlotte Delbo's trilogy in English "Auschwitz and After" Auschwitz and After (also available in the original French through amazon.frAuschwitz et après, Tome 1. Aucun de nous ne reviendra (French Edition), Auschwitz, et après, tome 2 (French Edition), Mesure de nos jours: Auschwitz et après, III (Documents) (French Edition)"Night" by Elie Wiesel Night
