This book is about the fate of 230 French women sent to the German concentration camps in January 1943. Arrested as members of the Resistance, they first went to Auschwitz before being transferred to Ravensbrück and Mauthausen as the Allies advanced. In Auschwitz they witnessed some of the most terrible scenes in human history. Only 49 returned to France.
The book’s whimsical but ultimately uninformative title belies a book which contains a wealth of historical information as well as some brilliant if horrific storytelling. The first 150 pages deal with the women’s Resistance activities — attending secret meetings, arranging safe passage to the free zone, running clandestine printing presses. The second part is about their experiences in the camps. As any account of life in Auschwitz inevitably must, it contains stories which are so profoundly disgusting that it is very difficult to read them at all. Much of Moorehead’s text is appallingly effective.
The author’s goal is presumably to bring alive large subjects, the Resistance and the Holocaust, by telling the story of a small part of them.
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