My Stripes Were Earned in Hell: A French Resistance Fighter's Memoir of Survival in a Nazi Prison Camp

by Jean-Pierre Renouard

This remarkable memoir tells the story of Jean-Pierre Renouard, a gentile, in Germany's Nazi prison camps. In this spare, compelling narrative of a year during which he and the world he knew descended into hell, he recounts his battle to survive—physically, emotionally, and morally. In May 1944, just a month before D-Day, Renouard, then a teenaged French underground fighter, was captured by the Gestapo, crammed into a cattle wagon with a hundred others, and sent to Neuengamme in Germany. After two months, he was transferred to the Misburg subcamp. In both camps he suffered, as did all his fellow inmates, from insufficient food and shelter and no medicine while being forced to do long hours of hard labor. Renouard vividly depicts the labor camps' brutal daily life and social hierarchies, his personal struggles, the friendships gained and lost, and, of course, his incredible and primary task of survival. When he was finally transferred to the infamous Bergen-Belsen death camp, a typhus epidemic had already spread, and he helplessly watched his last surviving comrades die. Even after Allied troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, he had to wait painful months before he could return to France. Written in a deliberately neutral tone, without hatred or even resentment, Renouard's memoir is a memorial to those murdered and a powerful testimony to the human capacity to commit—and to survive—mass atrocity.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir

136 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2011

Reviews

[Charles Weinblatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“This genuine record of Nazi terror stands as a powerful literary achievement . . . a superb reading experience.”

This is the memoir of Jean-Pierre Renouard, a French gentile imprisoned in Nazi labor and death camps during WWII. He was a former member of the French Resistance and a commander of the Legion of Honor. Mr. Renouard was awarded the Medal of Resistance and the Croix de Guerre.

As an adolescent underground fighter, Jean-Pierre Renouard was captured by the Gestapo in 1944. Initially sent to the prison camp Neuengamme, in Germany, he was transferred to several other camps, including the Misburg sub-camp and the infamous Bergen-Belsen.

The author’s vibrant descriptions include forced labor, starvation, brutality, and genocide. This genuine record of Nazi terror stands as a powerful literary achievement, with fragmented but eloquently described events.

Mr. Renouard’s vivid imagery and concise writing style chronicles the horrific life of Nazi concentration camp victims. Very concise chapters proffer brief but excellent descriptions of a cadre of fellow inmates in each of the squalid and terrifying Nazi camps.

Along the way Mr. Renouard encountered, befriended, and assisted many memorable fellow victims. The vast majority perished from sickness or starvation or were murdered. Mr. Renouard’s record provides them a lasting legacy.

My Stripes Were Earned in Hell captures the interminable, courageous, and ceaseless human effort to survive against the terrible Nazi campaign to destroy human life.

Mr. Renouard was not a Jew. Yet he and his compatriots were subjected to the same inhumanity Jews experienced.

In a heartrending manner, against the backdrop of unforgettable prisoners who befriended, supported and admired each other, this memoir describes the depth of Nazi perversion dealt to anyone deemed unfit.

If the book has a glaring shortcoming, it lies in the fact that each fleeting segment constitutes only a couple of pages before the author moves on to a different event. The reader is often left desiring more detail, enhanced character descriptions, and deeper exploration. The book would also be enhanced with pictures, maps, and diagrams. To the publisher’s credit, it is wrapped within a handsome hardcover with a descriptive jacket.

My Stripes Were Earned in Hell reads like a novel. It is an outstanding and inspiring example of one man’s triumph over insufferable conditions and his courage to survive, making this book a superb reading experience.

Charles S. Weinblatt
Author, Jacob’s Courage: A Holocaust Love Story

[taeli · Rating 3 out of 5]

finished 8/16/13

Jean-Pierre Renouard was a WWII French resistance fighter who was caught and spent a year in a German concentration camps. This short book contains vignettes of people he met and things that happened, good and bad, during that time. His prose is pretty terse and straight to the point while still containing a simple sort of poetic imagery. Sad and beautiful, the book shows the worst of humanity and the beauty and goodness that can be found during great hardship.

[Rebekah Streeter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brief, autobiographical work written in snapshots. The author writes without a precise timeline, telling about people, incidents, and conflicts that he encounters in Nazi concentration camps. A change of pace from standard historical reading- I enjoyed it. "My Stripes Were Earned in Hell: A French Resistance Fighter's Memoir of Survival in a Nazi Prison Camp" by Jean-Pierre Renouard

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very short narration from a concentration-camp survivor is just as compelling as any of the other scores I have read. Perhaps what makes it different is the author's admission of what shameful things he may have done as a prisoner, too.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Renouard's sparse, direct, and at times, wry, writing style makes for a poignant and powerful memoir.