Convoy To Auschwitz: Women of the French Resistance

by Charlotte Delbo, Carol Cosman (Translator), John Felstiner (Contributor)

On January 24, 1943, 230 women political prisoners, most of whom had worked for the French Resistance, were deported to Auschwitz. Author Charlotte Delbo was one of the 49 who survived. Now available in English for the first time, this haunting volume is Delbo's testament to those who formed the convoy to the hell that was Auschwitz. The prisoners came from all regions of France and represented a wide range of social backgrounds and political views. With a gripping simplicity and poignancy, Delbo recounts the unique life history of each woman, from her childhood to her involvement in the Resistance, from her arrest to her horrifying experience in the concentration camp. Collectively, these stories are a powerful and stirring reminder of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Charlotte Delbo was a French writer chiefly known for her haunting memoirs of her time as a prisoner in Auschwitz, where she was sent for her activities as a member of the French resistance.
Born in Vigneux-sur-Seine, Essonne near Paris, Delbo gravitated toward theater and politics in her youth, joining the French Young Communist Women's League in 1932. She met and married George Dudach two years later. Later in the decade she went to work for producer Louis Jouvet and was with his company in Buenos Aires when Wehrmacht forces invaded and occupied France in 1940.
She could have waited to return when Philippe Pétain, leader of the collaborationist Vichy regime, established special courts in 1941 to deal with members of the resistance. One sentenced a friend of hers, a young architect named Andre Woog, to death. "I can't stand being safe while others are guillotined", she told Jouvet. "I won't be able to look anyone in the eye."
Accordingly she returned to Paris and Dudach, who was already active in the resistance as the assigned courier for the internationally famous poet Louis Aragon. The couple spent much of that winter printing and distributing pamphlets and other anti-Nazi Germany reading material. They became part of the group around communist philosopher Georges Politzer, and took an active role in publishing the underground journal Lettres Françaises.
On March 2, 1942, police followed a careless courier to their apartment, and arrested George and Charlotte. The courier was able to escape from a back window.
Her memoir uses unconventional, almost experimental, narrative techniques to not only convey the experience of Auschwitz but how she and her fellow survivors coped in the years afterwards.

Reviews

[Ram Dass]

Les biographies, les parcours sont très intéressants. Ce livre date de 1965. Je conseille de lire en parallèle les informations sur le convoi des 31000 sur le site Mémoire Vive qui a des informations actualisées sur certaines déportées (notamment Thérèse Léopold, voir également le livre La passeuse de Michaël Prazan).

PJ :http://www.memoirevive.org/convoi-des...

[Petra Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have spent a lot of time studying the Holocaust, genocide, and atrocity crimes but I have never cried so much while reading a book. I don't know if it's because it's finals week or because we stand on the edge of WWIII but I sobbed so hard while reading this. Extraordinary story of the women of the French Resistance and what they suffered. Everyone should read.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in French, not English. It’s a very strange text—it often feels more like reading an index than anything resembling a novel. But it’s an astounding and moving project by someone who went through Hell itself and documented those there with her.

[Valerie Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brutally honest accounting from Auschwitz survivors of everyone from their transport, with as much detail about who these murder victims and survivors were before and after.

[Lapetitem · Rating 4 out of 5]

On ne pourra je crois jamais imaginer, jamais comprendre, jamais tout à fait partager. On peut (et on le doit aussi) rendre à chacun sa vie, son identité, sa voix, autant qu'on leur prend quand on décide de qui doit vivre, qui doit ne plus vivre, qui est un Homme, qui est un Sous-Homme... Impossible à intégrer aujourd'hui, ces personnes qui se sont obstinées à enfermer les autres, usant d'un étrange et si fugace pouvoir... dont ils auront été tout autant les victimes (c'est encore ce que je veux croire...). L'humanisme dans tout cela? difficile à retrouver, peut-être dans cette démarche précise, celle de rendre le nom, l'histoire, les traces de leur passage sur terre à toutes celles qui n'en sont pas revenues et à toutes celles dont le poids a été de plus de "sur-vivre". C'était il y a longtemps, c'était un autre siècle et pourtant rien, aujourd'hui, ne laisse penser que c'est définitivement terminé. Aux enfants, petits enfants, à leurs propre enfants et petits-enfants, les leurs comme les nôtres, ce devrait être une promesse, il ne faut pas oublier, il faut rester vigilants et ne pas penser que sa seule volonté ne peut rien changer, que tout se joue dans de plus hautes sphères, que les dés sont pipés... il suffit de savoir qui on souhaite être...
Voilà ce que ce livre annuaire morbide raconte !