Auschwitz

I am finishing this book on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2023, 80 years after the events recounted in this book.

This book is largely about one group of victims of the German occupation of France: some 249 women who fought silently for the French Resistance and who were given up by snitches and collaborator French police to the German SS.

Tortured by their captors, eventually shipped off to Birkenau concentration camp, many to die from abuse, starvation, or disease. Many murdered by murderers.

But this book is also about how France reacted to occupation by the Nazis. The new French government, among other things, banned abortion and condoned the burning of books. They did the dirty work of identifying and collecting French and other Jews for destruction in the death camps.

I am always shocked the brutality of the era. ( )

The most unbelievable part of this true story is that even one of these women survived at all. Members of the French Resistance, these women were betrayed, rounded up, and deported -- to Auschwitz. They showed unbelievable courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Caroline Moorehead does an admirable job in immersing us in the world of the resistance fighter and the hardships once they were "transported east". Hard to read, but even harder to put down. ( )

Very well researched. Lots of people to keep track of. ( )

Extraordinarily difficult to read emotionally, but such an honor. Caroline Moorhead has offered up a great tribute of stark facts and achingly astute observations of these women. If this topic needed any more humanizing here it is. ( )