But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir of the Holocaust

by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Judith Perrignon

A breathtakingly beautiful memoir by a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and an astonishing addition to the library of literature on the Holocaust

Marceline Loridan-Ivens was just fifteen when she was arrested along with her father in the Vichy-ruled part of France. Her mother and siblings managed to escape arrest. On their arrival at the camps, the two were separated--her father sent to Auschwitz, she to the neighboring camp of Birkenau. The three kilometres that separated them were an insurmountable distance, and yet her father managed to send her a short note, addressed to "My darling little girl". In But You Did Not Come Back, Marceline writes a letter responding to the father she would never know as an adult, to the man whose death enveloped her whole life. As a documentary film-maker in the 1970s and '80s, working in China and Vietnam, Marceline ultimately found purpose in her life, but the loss of her father never diminished in its intensity. And now, as anti-Semitism resurfaces in many parts of the world, Loridan-Ivens's testimony is a haunting and challenging reminder of one of the worst crimes humanity has ever seen. It is a deeply affecting personal story of a woman whose life was shattered and gradually rebuilt, and an irrefutable example of how memory survives and shapes everything.

From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Holocaust, History, War, Biography, World War II

112 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Marceline Loridan-Ivens was a writer and film director who was married to Joris Ivens. Her memoir But You Did Not Come Back details her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: On Sept. 18th, 2018....Marceline died. Incredible woman!!!!
This book she wrote really touches on many levels. I highly recommend it.


The year was 1944...
Marceline's Loridan-Ivens, 15 years old, was separated from her father
at the internment camp of Drancy, France. ( they had been arrested from the French Vichy government)

Marceline's father says:
"You might come back because you are young, but I will not come back".

Marceline's father, didn't come back. He died in the Holocaust.

This small book - ( one sitting read), is graphic in details. It's also one of the most
penetrating-visually-descriptive-(REAL & RAW), books I've read by a surviving person
from the Holocaust in many years. No spoilers in this review.

Marceline Loridan-I'vens is 86 years old. She is one of the 160 alive who came back ---
76,500 French Jews were sent to AuschwitzBirkenau. ( she to Birkenau - her dad to Auschwitz).
Six million Jews died.

This book she writes [I highly ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO READ IT], won't take long... but is one of the stories that will stay with you. It's written as a letter to her father. The loss and grief
from his death has never fully gone away. (I relate to her 'forever-tattooed-loss' of her father...having loss my own father when I was 4 years old). That type of loss
is like a cloud that follows a person for a lifetime. Yet, at the same time, Marceline has
an extraordinary 'adult' life in many ways. She is a woman making a difference in the world.

To me... This is one of the BOOKS-to-READ about THE HOLOCAUST -( there is no bullshit, excuse my French). I rank the quality of this book as highly as I do "Night", by Elie Wiesel.

To write "But You Did Not Come Back" - for the world to read is brave. What blows my mind
even more-- is that Marceline is 86 years old!
Other living Holocaust survivors in my life - close to her age - 'NEVER' even talked about what happened to them in those camps - let alone allow the world to read. When the movie Schindler's List came out, it was, "NO WAY". ( yet, to be honest... That movie 'helped'
many living Holocaust survivors begin to talk for the first time - ever!)
It took a very long time to realized that staying quiet wasn't the best thing. It brings me to tears when Marceline and other living survivors speak out. Soon there won't be any Holocaust survivors alive to tell their stories. We only have so much time left.

The average person hasn't any idea how remarkable Marceline Loridan-Ivens is.
At 75 years old, she started a new career.
Marceline established herself as a significant voice in the Jewish Film cinema: feature film maker, ... starting at age *75*.
She had already been a documentary filmmaker and was an activist for Algerian Independence.

Speaking out at 86 years of age - Marceline is making a great contribution. I'd love to meet
her myself ... ( I would tell her about the stories told to me from family & friends close in my life
too)...

Towards the end of her book she talks about how she doesn't ever see antiSemitism going away. "It is too deeply rooted in the world".
Israel never turned out to be the land of peace Jews hoped for. Israel
has been at war ever since it was created.
Anti-Semitism in France and throughout Europe is growing. Things are getting
tense in France again. Once again, we are reminded through this
exquisitely written book never to forget what happened -
THE BOOK REALLY DESERVES TO BE READ!!


This book will be released in stores in January - before the next International
Holocaust Remembrance Day - January 27th.


Thank You Grove Atlantic, Netgalley, and Marceline Loridan-Ivens!!!!!

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many novels about the Holocaust and several memoirs and non-fiction books and the most important message that I take from any of them is how vital it is that we don't forget so that this never happens again. A stunning fact is that given the number of years that have passed, there will soon be no living survivors so it was with utmost consideration that I read this memoir and highly recommend it everyone. As of the time of writing of this book, there were only 160 survivors still alive , according to author Marceline Loridan-Ivens . The records and the stories based on what happened will remain and for me it is a privilege that Marceline Loridan-Ivens shares her personal history as a holocaust survivor with us . This is memoir , one she writes to her father , a response to a letter that he had smuggled to her while she was fifteen at Birkenau and he at the nearby Auschwitz.

Certainly the physical suffering is depicted here but the emotional impact is depicted in a way that will pierce your heart as it well should . I wish I could read French so I could pick up every nuance of everything she wrote , but I trust that the translation is a good one . It was a beautifully written if it's possible to say such a thing about such horrific things.

This is an amazing , beautiful memoir, so affecting, like nothing I've read about the Holocaust. "If you only knew, all of you , how the camp remains in all our minds , and will until we die." So when these 160 survivors are no longer alive, we have to remember that it happened. Everyone should read this book .

Thank you Grove Atlantic and NetGalley.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gut wrenching read that is so raw it hurts.
This is about a young Jewish girl and the loss of her beloved father at Auschwitz. It is a memoir chronicling the years being held in the prison camp and the hope and anguish that comes with searching for a missing father.
The survival itself is a burden. The questions she continually asked, where are you? Where were you when ...? The torture knowing you were not far away, but cannot see you; talk to you. The grief. The helplessness. The loss of hope.

You are very brave for writing this story, Marceline Loridan-Ivens. And I thank you for your courage. As you ask yourself if your survival was worth it in the end, I hope you say yes, as you are a reminder to the world of this horrible past that must never happen again and we must never, ever forget.5*

[Violet wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

The memory of someone who survived a Nazi death camp. If I try to imagine what it must be like to carry such a memory through life my imagination fails me. We’re talking about someone who witnessed, suffered, even participated in unspeakable horrors every single day for months, sometimes years. A person who has experienced such a relentless barrage of horrors that some of them only return to memory in later life. As if there’s always another new recollection of horror waiting in the memory to be developed. A person haunted by the faces of the most cruel and hateful individuals imaginable. For example the SS officer who beat her unconscious for hugging her father. How could you ever stop hating that man? And how could life ever be normal again when you’re carrying in your body and mind all that hatred, all that horror? The answer is it can’t.

I can’t remember the last time I finished a book the same day I started it. It helps that this only runs to 100 pages but it’s written with such intimacy and honesty that you feel like the author is sharing her experiences with you personally and so it’s unthinkable that you should walk away and delay the rest of the story until tomorrow. Marceline Loridan-Ivens was arrested with her father while running away through the garden of the house where they lived during a raid. It’s often said the French police were just obeying orders but it takes zeal to catch someone who is running, especially when that someone is a fifteen year old child. The French do not come out of this book well. Especially when we learn Marceline still encountered lots of anti-semitism after the war. What perhaps distinguishes this book from other holocaust stories is the very moving and unfiltered account of the aftermath, the lifetime of emotional damage the camps did not only to the survivors but the families of survivors, even those who were “lucky” not to be arrested. The war was never over for them. The book is written in the form of a letter to her father who didn’t survive the camps. Rarely can you believe the blurb on the covers of books but in this case it’s all true – this book is “haunting and unputdownable”.

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 3 out of 5]

و تو برنگشتی شرح صمیمانه و صادقانه ای ایست از ارسلین لوریدان ایونس نویسنده و کارگردان فرانسوی . او در این کتاب بسیار کوتاه خاطرات خود را از دنیای شیطانی آشویتس – بیرکه ناو بیان کرده ، دنیای مخوفی که او را از پانزده سالگی به تصرف خود در آورده و هیچ گاه او را رها نکرده است .
بخشی از کتاب خانم ایونس یاد آوری خاطراتش در آشویتس و تلاش برای زنده ماندن در آن جهنم بوده ، او با پدر در یک اردوگاه بوده و رنج طاقت فرسای او را می دیده ، پدر گویی می دانسته که هرگز از آشوویتس بر نخواهد گشت .
قسمت دیگر کتاب ، نویسنده با وجود آن که آزاد شده اما گویی در یاد و خاطرات اردوگاه مرگ اسیر مانده ، او دیگر در ایستگاه قطار از ترس می لرزد ، از حمام های دوش دار گریزان است و دود کارخانه ها حال او را به هم می زند . جسم او اگرچه آزاد شده اما روح وروان او همانند سوفی در انتخاب سوفی و پریمو لوی فرزانه در اگر این نیز انسان است اسیر و زندانی آشوویتس مانده .
باری که خانم ایونس و یا دیگر بازماندگان اردوگاه های مرگ به دوش می کشیده اند سخت و طاقت فرسا بوده ، نه سوفی آنرا می تواند تحمل کند و نه پریمو لوی . گویا ایونس دست کم از ازاین دو اقبال بیشتری داشته . درپایان او هم همانند دوستش به این نتیجه می رسد که برگشتن از اردوگاه کار درستی نبوده ، اما همچنان امیدوار می ماند که شاید در آخرین لحظه زندگی و قبل از این که از دنیا برود در جواب این سوال بتواند بگوید که بله ، ارزشش را داشت .

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say after reading this? Words seem so trite after what Marceline and many, many, too many others went through. She is only fifteen when their chateau in France is overtaken by the Nazis. While most of her family escapes, she and her beloved father are captured. Taken first to Drancy, they are separated and he is taken to Auschwitz, she to the neighboring camp Birkenau. He manages to send her once last note.

How do you live after going through such extreme trauma? Never forgetting, always grieving for the father who never returns, people and family who cannot possibly understand. So heartbreaking, such strength just to get up in the morning. Am in awe of all she accomplished in her life. Very profound, emotionally stirring. Unforgettable.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

1944 Auschwitz - Burkenau

A survivor - Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Arrested in occupied France at age 15 with her father.....a now 89 year old Marceline writes a heartfelt tribute and memoir to her beloved father....who did not come home.

Written as in answer to his letter, Marceline recalls a time of horror and loss inside the electrified fence of her existence. Haunted memories and nightmares rest among her father's smuggled letter and their few precious moments together while incarcerated....moments that cost them dearly.

BUT YOU DID NOT COME BACK is a short read, but truly a memoir of love and pain that continued throughout the life of a survivor....even when the war was over.

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

و تو برنگشتی، شرح تقلای مارسلین لوریدان ایونس برای حفظ زندگی در جهنم قتلگاه نازی هاست، شوق دوباره دیدن چشم های پدر و یافتن آرامش و آرزوهای پیش از جنگ، روح زخمی اون رو در قالب جسم جوون اما فرسوده ش امیدوار نگه می‌داره اما واقع��ت مرگ و نابودی، راهی جز زنده نگه داشتن خاطره ی پدر و شرح وقایع روزهایی که تا ابد زندگی ش رو دگرگون کرده، برای مارسلین باقی نمیگذاره...
" همه کار کردم که هرگز از میل به زندگی دست نکشم، هرگز شبیه آن هایی نشوم که تسلیم می شوند. فراموشی را انتخاب می کنند، یعنی بی تفاوتی تدریجی نسبت به جسمشان و مرگی تدریجی تر... "

[Iris P · Rating 5 out of 5]

But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir




Marceline Loridans-Ivens - The Author

"Surviving makes other people’s tears unbearable. You might drown in them.”

― Marceline Loridan-Ivens, But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir

****************************************************

“I received an ARC of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!”


“I was quite a cheerful person, you know, in spite of what happened to us”, that is how Marceline Loridan-Ivens introduces herself to us, but let me start this review by saying this: But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir is not one of those uplifting, heartwarming, feel good memoirs; it’s not optimistic, spiritually elevating or full of assurances and hope for the future of the human race.

Loridan-Ivens's prose is surprisingly factual and unsentimental. My sense is that's because she didn't feel the need to enhance or amplify the harrowing nature of her narrative, the reality of what happened to her and her family speaks by itself.

Sometimes you read stories that ask you to re-examine your views about fate. And by that I mean fate with a capital F; the notion that our lives are somehow “pre-ordained” and that there's nothing we can do to change that pre-determined outcome (a concept by the way, that runs very much counter to the "Free Will" Protestant theology that was instilled on me as a youngster).

But when you learn about that soldier who was killed on the last day of his deployment, or the person who was supposed to be on the plane that crashed but didn’t make it to the airport on time, or the concentration camp prisoner whose fate was decided by a Nazi "Angel of Death" officer, whom after a quick glimpse and without an afterthought, determined whether that person would live or die. It does makes you wonder.

In March 1944, Marceline Loridan-Ivens and her family were living a quiet, relative sheltered life in Nazi-occupied France. All of this changed when she and her father, Solomon Rozenberg, were captured and sent to Drancy, a location that served as a layover to the extermination camps located in Poland.

Immediately after their arrival the two of them got separated, Solomon was left in Auschwitz while Marceline was sent to Birkenau, a women’s concentration camp. The two places were separated by a mere 3 kilometers. Marceline was only 16 years old.

At Birkenau, Marceline was put to work digging trenches for bodies, unloading potatoes and building the railway track that led directly to the gas ovens.

One day Marceline and Solomon catch a glimpse of each other. Marceline is euphoric when she sees him but her happiness is short-lived when soldiers savagely beat her into unconsciousness. A few weeks later, Solomon convinces a fellow prisoner to smuggle an onion, a tomato and a short letter for her, all things that were considered unimaginable luxuries in the camp.

The note is only a few sentences long and is addressed, “To my darling little girl” and signed with Solomon's Yiddish name, Shloïme. The risk he has taken is punishable by death, but this note gives Marceline hope and encourages her to keep fighting for her life.

Marceline has to make the note disappear so that the camp officers won’t find it on her, the narrative of this memoir is framed around her inability to recall the message her father wrote.

But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir is Marceline's response to that note, in it she painfully contemplates and reflects on what Solomon might have written to her and the precious memories she lost.

"That may seem unimportant today" she tells him, "But that piece of paper, folded in four, your writing, the steps of the man walking from you to me, proved that we still existed."

Marceline Loridan-Ivens (Marceline is front left, holding a ball) with her family at Bercq Plage, France- 1935

Later on, Marceline is sent to Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Anne Frank died, and then to a factory where junker planes are manufactured. She was finally liberated in the early summer of 1945. She never heard from his father again.

Most Holocaust books I’ve read end with the liberation of survivors, something that is usually told in a solemn but uplifting narrative.
One wishes to believe that suffering for the Jews ended with Germany's defeat. The last image one would like to keep out of World War II is one of people cheering, of allied soldiers being welcome as liberators and war tribunals serving justice to evil-doers. As we know, the story is much more complicated than that.

As it often happens when people endured extreme traumatic experiences, survival leads to confusion and guilt. Holocaust survivors in particular came back to a world where people seemed hell-bent on putting the atrocities of Word War II behind.

Marceline encountered this attitude not only from ordinary French citizens, but from her immediate family and from the Jewish community at large.

About this she recalls:

"...After the war, the obsession of the Jews to rebuild everything at all costs was intense, extreme—if you only knew. They wanted life to continue normally, as before, they went about it so quickly. They wanted weddings, even though people were missing from their photos because they hadn’t come back—weddings, couples, singing, and, soon, children, to fill the void. I was seventeen, no one even thought about sending me back to school and I didn’t have the strength to ask. I was a young woman, soon they’d marry me off."

Chimneys of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir is as much the story of Marceline's horrific experiences at Birkenau, as it is about her challenges to readjust to an ordinary life after coming back to France.

Marceline returns to an indifferent mother and a family that is willfully ignorant of the horrific experiences she went through. "You have to forget" her mother tells her, "She didn’t understand where I was coming back from, or didn’t want to.”

Marceline's desperate yearning for the father she lost is no only the result of the natural mourning process, for her Solomon also represents the missing link between her life before and after Birkenau. She believes that somehow he could've helped made sense of it all.

"...There would have been two of us who knew" she tells her him,"Maybe we wouldn’t have talked about it often, but the stench, what we saw, the foul smells and the intensity of our emotions would have washed over us like waves, even in silence, and we could have divided our memories in two."

Soon after the end of the war, Marceline got married to Francis Loridan a civil engineer, but the marriage deteriorated very quickly. In 1962, she felt in love and got married to Joris Ivens, a controversial Dutch cinematographer who was 30 years her senior. Neither one of her husbands were of Jewish ancestry, and she never wanted to have children.

At 88, Marceline Loridan-Ivens has lived a successful life. She became a writer, activist and documentary filmmaker, but the horrors of the concentration camps and her struggles to live a happy life have never left her. She is something of a controversial figure in France, a country with which by her own account, she has had a very complicated relationship.


"Et tu n'est pas revenu"- French Cover

On an interview I recently read, Marceline Loridan-Ivens was asked why she had decided to write her memoir now, she said that even before the terrorist attacks in Paris, she was already alarmed and dismayed by the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe. “I see policemen outside of synagogues but I do not want to be someone who needs protection,” she declared.  But “I’m often afraid because I know what’s happening.” 

Last year marked the 70 year anniversary since the Soviets liberated the Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland, but reading Loridan-Ivens account you feel as if that event only took place a little while ago. But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir is that vivid and emotionally raw.

With its unsparing, bleak prose, this memoir will probably break your heart, so why should you even consider reading it? I would say if for no other reason, just because it’s gorgeously written, brutally honest and deeply touching.

But there is also this:
6,000,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. 76,500 French Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 2,500 came back. 160 of them are still living. Marceline is just one of them. We are running out of survivors. Her story needs to be heard because sadly, it's remains very much relevant.

[Dem · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

" You might come back because you're young, but I will not come back" Marceline Loridan's father to her in 1944.

This is a moving Novella written in the style of a letter from a daugher to her father. Marceline and her father were both taken to concentration camps and separated and she survived to tell her story.

This short book is very well written and I love how it centers around a letter Marceline receives while in the camp from her father and how years later she has no recollection of what was in that letter but she uses this book to reply to her father's letter and in doing so gives us a glimpse of what her life was like while in the camp and her struggles with life when she returns to her family

I have read a great deal of books relating to this period of history and I always find something new and interesting in each book I read.

I listened to this on on audio and the narrator was very good.

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel strange rating this; it somehow doesn't feel right to assign stars to a first-hand account of someone's pain and trauma. This slim volume is an unflinchingly honest and anguished love letter to the author's father who died in the Holocaust. It's also her truth on not only what it was like to endure the holocaust herself, but to survive it. You can never, ever be the same, and Loridan-Ivens doesn't sugarcoat it.

I love stories that make me think and bury themselves in my heart. Loridan-Ivens reminds us that anti-Semitism, hatred and intolerance still surround us. It's a heavy-hearted realization but that's why books like this are important and must be read - lest we forget how close we are to the razor's edge, how vigilant and observant we need to be to keep history's horrors from repeating themselves. It never ceases to amaze me, no matter how many of these accounts I read, how incredibly stupid and viciously brutal the human race can be.

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to my Goodreads friend Chrissie for convincing me to read this book. Because it was short and I didn’t want it to languish on my to-read shelf, I borrowed it from the library. It never even got put on my currently reading shelf because even though I’m in the middle of a can’t put it down novel I decided to start it, a bit after midnight and ended up staying up half of the night reading it, until I had to sleep, so I finished up later in the morning. It was worth taking a few hours away from my novel to read it.

This book gives me hope that perhaps there are other elderly Holocaust survivors who will write other worthy memoirs.

This spare little book packs a punch, and it’s amazing how much the author is able to cover in this memoir, written as a letter to her father. She’s now an elderly woman. She was a Jew in France and at 15 she was sent to the concentration camps. She writes about her experiences in the camps, a bit about her life prior to that, and a lot about the scope of her entire life. While it’s true what other reviewers here have said that she hasn’t been able to get past the camps, nor have her surviving friends and relatives, I was actually impressed with how much she’s done in her life, how much good, despite the scars she continues to carry, despite how greatly her family was impacted, both during and after the war. She definitely makes a point of addressing the continued anti-Semitism in modern times and throughout various eras too, and the entirely of the book is what made it feel very important to me. I’m so glad that she wrote it and got it published.

I wish I could have read it in its original French but as far as I could tell it was a fine translation.

I mostly appreciate her honesty, as her way of expressing it cuts right to the heart of all that’s important, every time, in every way.

As I was reading I thought I might assign 4 stars to this book because I assumed I’d want more than what was contained within its 100 pages. By the time I got to the end though it felt complete. I can’t give it less than 5 stars. In a way it’s a slight book, but what’s there is brilliant and important. Outstanding book!

Note to self: Her father originally came from Poland and this author’s maiden name is Rozenberg, meaning mountain rose or mountain of roses. One of my grandparents was a Jew whose parents (My great grandparents) were born in Hungary, and their last name was Rosenberg, with the same meaning, just a different spelling. I always think of how the countries’ borders have changed over time. I know that this is a common name, but I’m interested in genealogy, and I always wonder who might be related to me, however distantly. I also recently found out that two of my other grandparents had ancestors from Poland, one might have been born there himself. Different surnames though.

Highly recommended for readers who like reading Holocaust memoirs, coming of age stories, historians, today’s young people high school and up.

Notable quotes:

“Surviving makes other people’s tears unbearable. You might drown in them.”

“...our family became a place where you screamed for help but no one heard, not ever.”

“...our history, the history of European Jews...they will never forgive us for the evil they've done to us”

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read "Et tu n'est pas revenu" in French, as I have the good fortune to be able to read in the language it was written. I gather the English language translation will be published as But You Did Not Come Back in January 2016. In this short narrative, Marceline Loridan-Ivens writes a letter to her father. Loridan-Ivens is Jewish and a camp survivor. Her father had moved his family from Poland to Paris before WWII, where he expected them to be safe. But Marceline and her father and some other family members were sent to a number of camps. As they were going, her father told her that she would survive but he wouldn't. While she was in a camp, she was given a letter from her father, but many years later she cannot remember what it says, and indeed while she survived her father didn't. At the age of 86, she has written this open letter to her father -- somewhat of a response to his letter and to his imploring her to survive -- which recounts her life. She provides some details about how she survived in the camp, the very difficult few years following her release, and her life since as a filmmaker and activist against colonialism. The time in the camp and following is horrific, but not surprising given the many narratives about this time. The part I found most moving is the last third of the book, where she dwells on the long term effects of her survival. The effects on her family, on how she has lived her life, her hopes for the world and her discouragement in the face of continued anti semitism, terrorism and violence. Somehow by complete coincidence, I read this book on the day following the horrendous acts of terrorism in Paris on November 13, 2015. I can't help wondering what Loridan-Ivans is thinking. The concept of writing about her life and reflections as a letter to her father is very powerful. It is a short book and well worth reading.

[Mohammad · Rating 3 out of 5]

این كه به كسی بگویند «تو قوی هستی» یا «خیلی بیشتر از دیگران قوی هستی»، گفته‌ای بی‌معناست. مسئله سر قوی یا ضعیف بودن نیست، موضوع این است كه هر كسی از جایی به بعد بالاخره فرومی‌ریزد؛ حالا یا در خود فرومی‌ریزد یا از بیرون. فرو ریختن یعنی تكه ای بزرگ از وجودت از بین برود و هنوز زنده باشی. فرو ریختن از درون یعنی ده هزار دینامیت در قلبت منفجر شود اما از بیرون فقط صدایی خفه شنیده شود. احتمالا زن ها مدت بیشتری نسبت به مردها می‌توانند با وجود این خرابی‌ها ادامه دهند. مرد ساكت می‌شود، سیگار می‌كشد و چند سال بعد چروك و گودی رو صورتش نمایان می‌شود. زن اما نه، آتشفشان خاموش است، اگر در وجناتش دقت كنی شاید متوجه خلائی بشوی اما هر روز بی صدا كارهای خانه را انجام می‌دهد، غبار را از روی چیزها پاك می‌كند اما در پایان روز تنهای تنها از درون مچاله می‌شود

بورخس می‌گوید خداحافظی نفی جدایی است؛ انسان‌ها خداحافظی را ابداع كردند، زیرا به نوعی خودشان را فناناپذیر می‌دانستند. فروریختن از درون یعنی چی؟ یعنی همین كتاب؛ همین نامه. یعنی تو خداحافظی كردی و.. برنگشتی

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★

Haunting, haunted. A brief, moving love letter from the author to her father, who died in Auschwitz while she survived in Birkenau, which she thought was far, far away – but was nearby, only 3km between them. She wrote this brief memoir when she was 87, after a full, busy, productive life but still suffering from the loss and the pain of separation.

“I loved you so much that I was happy to be deported with you. And I can say it again now. For with time, the darkness of the camps over my life has merged with your absence. And it is having to live without you that weighs down on me.”

She was only 15 and her father had told her, “You might come back, because you’re young, but I will not come back.”

While in the camp, she clung to a scrap of paper on which he’d managed to send her a message, and she always wondered if he were alive or not.

Sometimes, what he’d said gave her hope. While other people kept disappearing, she was fulfilling his prophecy –she might come back. Yet, at the same time, he’d said he wouldn’t come back, hadn’t he? So that made her miserable, thinking these were “words that separated us, seemed to offer up your life in exchange for mine. I was still alive—were you?”

After coming home, she tried to kill herself a couple of times. “Yet in the camp, I did everything I could to stay alive. Never allowed myself to believe that death would mean peace. Never became that girl I’d seen throw herself against the electric fence. She wasn’t the only one, it had become a common expression ‘to go to the fence,’ to die quickly, electrocuted or riddled with bullets from the machine guns in the watchtower . . . “

She accomplished a lot in her adult life, working with her second husband making films and documentaries. He was 30 years her senior, and her brother said she’d married her father. She hadn’t considered that but did admit she’d married a man her father would have loved.

About him, she said (to her father here), “I needed that dependency, the strength and convictions of a man like him. He was the school I’d never finished. The love that would save me. He represented a land far away. The antidote to your absence.”

After all her success in film and fighting anti-Semitism, she and her sister-in-law talked about whether or not it was good that they’d come back from the camps. Her sister-in-law thought not, but Marceline remains hopeful and said, “I hope that if someone asks me that question before I’m about to die, I’ll be able to say, ‘Yes, it was worth it.’ “

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Faber and Faber, for allowing me a preview copy. It certainly was worth it.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars
This is a brief novella written in the form of a letter written by Loridan-Ivens to her father. Loridan-Ivens is a French Jew and in 1944 when she was fifteen she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her father. She returned from the camps, he did not: hence the title. As you would imagine the descriptions of the camps are difficult to read. This describes the arrival of a group of Hungarians:
“They undressed them, sent them to the gas chamber – the children, babies and old people first, as usual”
The very ordinariness of the phrase is what is chilling, it becomes normal. Loridan-Ivens takes her father through her life, in the camps and afterwards. One thing she does return to again and again is that whilst she was in the camp her father did manage to send her a note starting, “to my darling little girl”. However, apart from that one phrase she cannot remember the rest of the note and cannot understand why.
The description of the difficulties of life after the camps is telling, as is the guilt of those who were not sent to the camps (her brother and sister who escaped the camps, both committed suicide). Loridan-Ivens vividly describes her struggle to make any sense of her life:
“Why was I incapable of living once I’d returned to the world? It was like a blinding light after months in the darkness. It was too intense, people wanted everything to seem like a fresh start, they wanted to tear my memories from me; they thought they were being rational, in harmony with passing time, the wheel that turns, but they were mad, and not just the Jews — everyone! The war was over, but it was eating all of us up inside.”
With her second husband Joris Ivens, she made documentaries looking at issues of oppression. As she writes this she is in her late eighties and laments the rise of Anti-Semitism again and in particular in France. Her film work is significant and especially “A Little Birch Tree Meadow” from 1973 which follows the life of a survivor of Birkenau. She was very much involved in the intellectual ferment of the left bank in Paris in the 50s and 60s and in the struggle for Algerian independence.
A brief and powerful account of one survivor of the Holocaust with a passionate defence of humanistic values.

[Laysee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you only knew, all of you, how the camp remains permanently within us. It remains in all our minds, and will until we die." – Marceline Loridan-Ivens

But You Did Not Come Back is a slim but poignant memoir of a Holocaust survivor. It left me choking on silent tears.

Marceline Loridan-Ivens is born in 1928. At age 15, she and father were deported, along with 76,500 French Jews, to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the point of deportation, her father told her, "You might come back, because you're young, but I will not come back." Only 2,500 returned. Marceline’s father, as he had predicted, did not.

The memoir took the form of letters Marceline wrote to her father after the war of that unimaginably horrific time in the concentration/death camps. They were separated and Marceline recalled the anguish she felt, "Between us stood...the unbearable uncertainty of what was happening to us all." The last thing her father left her was a note, which she cherished above all else. Hence, it was heart-wrenching to read that she could not remember his last words (apart from “my darling girl”) no matter how desperately she tried. In her own words, "I know all the love those lines contained. I've spent my entire life trying to find that love." She simply could not hold onto those words and live. Trauma, mercifully or not, offered an automatic memory-erasing mechanism. This is just the tip of the iceberg of immense loss, anger, anxiety, and despondency that afflicted not just Marceline but also her siblings in the years to come.

Read this memoir. It is raw, visceral, and unsentimental in its depiction of a time in history we will all do well never to forget.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slim, hard-hitting book that doesn't dwell on the horrors that Loridan-Ivens experienced in Birkenau so much as examine their aftermath. Returning to a family who was spared from the concentration camps while losing the only other family member who was sent to Auschwitz with her, she writes this memoir as an extended letter to her father, whose death overshadows her own survival. Sparse and poignant, But You Did Not Come Back is certainly worth a read even if you feel oversaturated with WWII lit.

[Babywave · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Es war notwendig, dass das Gedächtnis zerbrach,sonst hätte ich nicht leben können.“

Marceline wird mit 15 Jahren deportiert. Ebenso ihr Vater. Beide werden voneinander getrennt. Über 70 Jahre später schreibt sie einen Brief an ihn und kehrt dadurch in diese schreckliche Zeit zurück.
Sie beschreibt eine kleine Zeitspanne vor der Deportation, eine Zeitspanne, als sie sich im Lager befindet und wir begleiten sie ein kleines Stück, nachdem sie nach Hause zurückgekehrt ist.

Zwischen diesen schmalen Buchdeckeln steckt auf so wenigen Seiten so viel Leid und Grausamkeit, dass es nachvollziehbar ist, dass sehr viele Menschen, die diese Gewalt erleben mussten, lange nicht oder gar nicht darüber sprechen konnten. Dass sie zum Teil aufhören mussten zu fühlen, um sich während dieser Zeit im Lager am Leben zu halten. Die Autorin versucht in knappen Sätzen zu beschreiben, wie ihr Alltag dort aussah und man hat selbst keine Worte dafür. Sie berichtet so sachlich, wie es geht, denn auch sie musste ihren Geist auf Autopilot stellen.
Was mich außerdem bewegt hat, war ihre Rückkehr. Niemand von denen, zu denen sie zurückkehrte sprachen mit ihr darüber. Viele wollten weitermachen, konnten nicht sprechen und/oder erst recht nicht verstehen. Und so war sie erneut gefangen. In dem Trauma, der Gewalt. Es ist wirklich unvorstellbar.

Immer wieder macht es sprachlos und trotz allem nimmt es kein Ende, dass heutzutage immer noch Menschen andere Menschen hassen. Und zwar für deren Herkunft oder Religion.
Wann hört die Menschheit damit auf…..?

Ein weiteres sehr wichtiges Zeitzeugnis, welches nicht vergessen werden darf.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a moving, novella length book, written almost as an open letter from the author to her father. Marcelline Loridan-Ivans was deported from France with her beloved father – he to Auschwitz and she to Birkenau. They were so close and yet divided. They only saw each other twice; the first time Marcelline ran to her father. The second time she didn’t dare…

Still, somehow during this time, her father managed to arrange to smuggle a short note to his daughter. The note began, “My darling little girl,” and it seemed impossible that he had managed to reach out and contact her when they were so separated by the barbed wire of the camps.

During her time in the camp, Marcelline reflected that she lived only for the present, with no hope. Still, she refused to give in. Her father had stated to her that she would live, but he would not and somehow, she felt, she had to survive. Her hope, of course, was to be reunited with her father, but, sadly, that was not to be.

This short book is not only an important document of what happened to Marcelline, but tells poignantly about the aftermath of such life shattering events. For the author, there should have been some kind of happy ending; she does survive and returns to her mother and siblings. However, there is nobody with which to share her experiences or who understands her despair. Her mother is unable to deal with what happened and urges her to put her memories behind her and move on, but this is not possible and she feels bereft and alone.

I found this a very truthful read. The author tells of her emotions and feelings with candid reality. Although she adored her father, she openly acknowledged his failings in refusing to leave the country and of making the family too obvious, in the large house he purchased (although I did admire this ambitious and flamboyant decision). This is an important book and a testament to the man whose character shone out of the pages of this book- her beloved father, who I felt honoured to read about. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

[☮Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best memoirs I've ever read, if not the best. Marceline and her father had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, picked up together in occupied France by the Nazis and sent off to different camps. She tells of occasionally seeing her father, and of receiving a most cherished letter from him--the contents of which she later on would not be able to recall, something that haunted and troubled her throughout life. Yes, she was freed from the camp; her father was not.

Feeling no closure, with no actual body or grave to visit, the memoir is addressed to her father as she recounts her life and feelings after being released. I think that was what I loved best. It felt so personal and so thoughtful; beautiful yet bittersweet. I highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

[Agapi]

Από τα βιβλία που εύχεσαι να ήταν στην κατηγορία "fiction".

[Leila · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and deeply;y moving memoir. Well worth a read.

[Milly Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cómo se califica una lectura como ésta? Por la cantidad de lágrimas derramadas? Por la severidad de la opresión en el pecho? Por los muchos gritos ahogados de denuncia que uno quisiera exclamar? O por las alabanzas a la escritora por su tino y tono al redactarla de esta forma? No se puede reseñar ni calificar, hay que leerla y sentirla nomás.

[Negar Khalili · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب از زبان مارسلین نوشته شده. مارسلین از معدود یهودیان نجات‌یافته از اردوگاه‌های کار اجباری جنگ جهانی دومه.
مارسلین و پدرش هر دو به اسارت گرفته می‌شن. پدرش می‌ره آشویتس، مارسیل هم به بیرکنائو
نقطه‌ی عطف داستان اونجاست که یک بار مارسلین پدرش رو می‌بینه. پدرش بهش می‌گه: مارسلین، تو جوونی، نجات پیدا می‌کنی اما من بر نمی‌گردم.
و هرگز بر نمی‌گرده...
و مخاطب کتاب پدر مارسلینه.
عجیبه واقعا. در مورد جنگ جهانی دوم و اردوگاه‌های کار اجباری خیلی شنیدیم و خیلی دیدیم، چون موضوعیه که خیلی بهش پرداخته شده، اما چیزی نیست که هرگز عادی بشه. اون حد از شقاوت و بی‌رحمی و جنایت هرگز عادی نمی‌شه. اینجا هم مارسلین از شرایط اردوگاه می‌گه. شرایطی که وحشتناکه. و این موضوع فقط یه موضوع فیزیکی نیست. فقط گشنگی و شکنجه و اتاق گاز و کوره‌ي آدم‌سوزی و آزمایش‌های عجیب و غریب منگله (پزشک آشویتس) نیست. اون‌جا آدمیت از بین رفته. اون‌جا جاییه که حتی زندانی‌ها هم نسبت به مرگ هم‌نوعشون بی‌تفاوت و بی‌ٰحم شدن.
انگار چشمشون به جنایت عادت کرده.
جایی از داستان مارسلین می‌گه وقتی از اردوگاه نجات پیدا کردم و برگشتم خونه، نمی‌تونستم روی تخت بخوابم. بدنم راحتی تخت رو پس می‌زد.
تجربه‌ای که مارسلین و آدم‌های دیگه در اردوگاه‌های اس اس از سر گذروندن چیز ویژه‌ و ترسناکیه. شاید از شقاوت‌های تمام تاریخ عجیب‌تر.
تجربه‌ای غریب، غریب، غریب...

گفتن نداره که کتاب خیلی تلخه، اگر تاب این تلخی زننده رو ندارین سمتش نرین، اما اگر تابش رو دارین خیلی خوندنیه و خیلی خوب ترجمه شده. مترجم فضا و زبان نویسنده رو خیلی خوب درآورده . ولی روی جلد کتاب به نظرم خیلی پرت و پلا و بیخوده. جا داشت که طرح جلد بهتری براش کار بشه.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short memoir, but it packs an emotional punch. I’m having a difficult time putting into words how raw and powerful this memoir was for me. All the stories I’ve read about holocaust survivors have only focused on the emotions and experiences leading up to and in the concentration camps. But Marceline takes this a step further and discusses what it’s like to live after the war. The fact this is written in the first person, as a letter to her father, makes it so personal that it breaks your heart a thousand times over. After seventy plus years, time has not healed Marceline’s wounds. Reading her story reminded me of my grandfather, who was a gunner and a POW in WWII. It took him over sixty years to share his story, and when he finally did there was never a time when he didn’t stop and take a deep breath or wipe the tears from his eye.

There aren’t many left from The Greatest Generation and it’s important to hear their stories while we can. I’m so thankful to Marceline for sharing hers.

[Crazytourists_books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this little book in two days, I practically dived in it. Surviving Auschwitz, surviving the death camps...
While reading this book, a letter of a girl that survived to her father that didn't, I kept thinking about my kids. What would I have done if they had taken them away from me? How can a parent even try to survive after that?
How can human beings be so inhumane, so cruel.
Yesterday was the International Holocaust Memorial day for 2019, this book is a tribute to horror, loss, pain and life. May we never forget, never!

[nettebuecherkiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

Die 15-jährige Marceline wird 1943 gemeinsam mit ihrem Vater nach Auschwitz-Birkenau deportiert. Ihr Vater sagt ihr, sie sei jung und werde anders als er selbst zurückkehren. Dass er Recht behalten soll, wird ihr gesamtes Leben prägen.

Dieses ist ein kurzes, aber besonders einprägsames Buch. Die französische Regisseurin Marceline Loridan-Ivans schildert nicht nur ihre Erinnerungen an die Konzentrationslager Auschwitz und Bergen-Belsen, wo ihre Befreiung stattfand, sie erzählt uns, wie schrecklich die Tatsache des Todes ihres Vaters im KZ oder auf einem der Todesmärsche für sie war und wie unerträglich, im Gegensatz zu ihm und vielen anderen überlebt zu haben. Sie wird Auschwitz nie wirklich verlassen, durch geringste Auslöser werden Verhaltensmuster aus der Zeit reaktiviert.

Kein Geschichtsbuch kann das Grauen des KZs dem Leser näherbringen als die Worte einer Überlebenden, die Ohnmacht, als sie zur Arbeit in der Umgebung der Todesöfen gezwungen wird, als sie immer wieder Zeugin wird, wie Neuankömmlinge direkt aus den Zügen in Richtung der Gaskammern laufen müssen. Der regelrecht animalische Überlebensdrang, den sie beinahe widerwillig erfährt.

Die wunderbare, pointierte Sprache der Autorin macht das Werk zu einem besonders eindringlichen Zeugnis des Holocaust.

Iris Berben liest mit aller Einfühlsamkeit und bringt die großartige Sprache sehr gut zur Geltung.

Ein besonders empfehlenswertes Hörbuch.

[Mateicee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tief bewegend. Es gibt nicht genug Wörter den Sturm an Emotionen zu beschreiben, die solche Biografien bei mir auslösen.

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stupendous book. Even if you have already read a zillion holocaust books. What this book has and that many other books lack is the focus of living your life after having survived the camps. One is forever changed. How do you choose to live your life after that?

The author is 86 when she writes this book. She was born in France (Épinal in the Vosges) in 1928 to Jewish Polish immigrants. At the beginning of the Second World War they moved to the Vaucluse. She was captured with her father, Szlama Rosenberg, and was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944. There, father and daughter were separated. She at Birkenau. He at Auschwitz. The mere three kilometers that separated them physically were in reality far apart. She received one letter from him. One. Holding that miracle, that slip of paper, that is all she had. Does she remember its lines? No. Only that it was to her, “his darling little girl” and his signature at the bottom. She was fifteen. He in his early forties. He said to her when at Drancy Transit Camp she might come back, but he would not. This book is her letter to her dead father.

This book has not one wasted word. It is a mere 112 pages or 2 hours 12 minutes in the audio format. You are told all that has to be said between a missing father and his daughter. It speaks of her life in the camps. her liberation by the Russians and what she did with her life after. She speaks to him, to one of the few who could possibly understand. She speaks of what happened to her family. She honestly looks back at her own life and explains the why of her life choices and why her family fell apart after her father’s death.

"There was no family without you."
"The camp remains permanently in us."
"I lived because you wanted me to live."
"France sent you to your death."
"They will never forgive us for the evil they have done us."

Marceline Loridan-Ivebs writes this book now with the belief that antisemitism will never disappear. Now in her 80s she looks around and sees antisemitism not decreasing but growing. She writes the book for the French people and she writes it for all the rest of us too. Is there no way we can prove her wrong?

This is not a "feel sorry for me" book. What we are delivered is a concise look at her own life and where we are today. Her life was forever changed by her camp experiences. There is history; every bit concisely told. We are given the years of the second half of the century as they are played out in her own. She sees back with clarity and honesty. Concise and full of meaning - these are the words I would use to describe the book.

The audiobook narration by Karen Cass was very, very good. Perfect French. The real French as it is spoken by French people. I sound like a broken record: please speak slowly, please speak slowly, please speak slowly........ The lines in this book must be thought about. The book is not read rapidly, but for people like me who really want time to think, an even slower speed would be appreciated.