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You’ve Got to Tell Them: A French Girl's Experience of Auschwitz and After
On a quiet winter night in 1944, as part of their support of the Third Reich’s pogrom of European Jews, French authorities arrested Ida Grinspan, a young Jewish girl hiding in a neighbor’s home in Nazi-occupied France. Of the many lessons she would learn after her arrest and the subsequent year and a half in Auschwitz, the most notorious concentration camp of the Holocaust, the first was that “barbarity enters on tiptoes . . . [even] in a hamlet where everything seemed to promise the peaceful slumber of places forgotten by history.”
Translated by Charles B. Potter, You’ve Got to Tell Them is the result of a friendship that formed in 1988, when Grinspan returned to visit Auschwitz for the first time since 1945 and where she met Bertrand Poirot-Delpeche, a distinguished writer for the Paris newspaper Le Monde . Sometimes speaking alone, sometimes speaking in close alternation, Grinspan and Poirot-Delpeche simultaneously narrate the story of her survival and the decades that followed, including how she began lecturing in schools and guiding groups that visited the death camps. Replete with pedagogical resources including a discussion of how and why the Holocaust should be taught, a timeline, and suggestions for further reading, Potter’s expert translation of You’ve Got to Tell Them showcases a clear and moving narrative of a young French girl overcoming one of the darkest periods in her life and in European history.
Translated by Charles B. Potter, You’ve Got to Tell Them is the result of a friendship that formed in 1988, when Grinspan returned to visit Auschwitz for the first time since 1945 and where she met Bertrand Poirot-Delpeche, a distinguished writer for the Paris newspaper Le Monde . Sometimes speaking alone, sometimes speaking in close alternation, Grinspan and Poirot-Delpeche simultaneously narrate the story of her survival and the decades that followed, including how she began lecturing in schools and guiding groups that visited the death camps. Replete with pedagogical resources including a discussion of how and why the Holocaust should be taught, a timeline, and suggestions for further reading, Potter’s expert translation of You’ve Got to Tell Them showcases a clear and moving narrative of a young French girl overcoming one of the darkest periods in her life and in European history.
- GenresWorld War II
200 pages, Hardcover
Published August 20, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 18, 2022
Easy to read, short chaptered memoire of a young girl who was moved to the country side for protection, only to be betrayed by the local police. She survived the loss of her parents in Auschwitz and was finally back home after surviving with the help of many strong female protagonists. Excellent read.
January 18, 2024
Whats most interesting about this book is what happens after the shoah. I liked reading it.
November 24, 2018
Ida’s experience is not to be diminished.
While I lost myself completely in her story, I did struggle with the translations & “jumpiness” the author displayed (speaking w Ida and sometimes putting both parts of conversation into the page, sometimes his thoughts and her responses, etc) it was confusing to follow from a literal standpoint in terms of punctuation and how it flowed.
While I lost myself completely in her story, I did struggle with the translations & “jumpiness” the author displayed (speaking w Ida and sometimes putting both parts of conversation into the page, sometimes his thoughts and her responses, etc) it was confusing to follow from a literal standpoint in terms of punctuation and how it flowed.
November 12, 2020
Did not like the POV taken to tell the story - confusing, quoty
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews