A Train In Winter

I just finished the book Maria sent to me 'A Train in Winter'.  It is the story of 230 women who were a part of the French Resistance in WWII and who were hunted down and imprisoned and eventually sent to Auschwitz. 

Only 49 survive and return to France after the war.  The saddest part to me is that these 49 who survive do not really have happy lives after the war.  It is as if they cannot get the horror of what they went through out of their memories or out of their physical health.  They feel they cannot really put into understandable words what they went through either.

I myself had not read such personal descriptions of life in Auschwitz.  I did not know there were many others there besides the Jews.  Although the mission was to exterminate the Jews, many others were there to work for the Nazis, but they were horribly treated and most of them died also.  (Actually the Nazis had these women sign papers that they would not tell what went on in the camps.)  How could they ( the Nazis) who were losing the war at this time, expect them to honor that?

I cried for awhile after I finished.  I felt so ashamed of my every feeling sad about any experiences I have had--they cannot, of course, be even a particle of what these women had gone through.

One thing that was interesting is this quote: "Their own particular skills as women, caring for others and being practical, made them, they told themselves, less vulnerable than men to harsh conditions and despair.  Adaptability was crucial, resignation fatal.  The inability to undo a vision of life as it should be and not cope with what it was, led, as they had observed. to apathy and the condition of musulmans, those more dead than alive.  They did their best to stay clean, to wash their faces in the snow or icy brooks, believing that it made them both healthier and more dignified.  And they wanted, passionately, to live, to survive the war, and to describe to the world exactly what they had been through and what they had witnessed."

Also interesting was that the older women (30-50s) could adapt more than the younger ones (20 and younger who were healthier).  They also knew they needed each other and so kept that friendship and caring throughout their imprisonment.  You could not survive alone.

Toward the end, the Nazis were speedily trying to get rid of the emaciated bodies before the Yanks would discover them.   "One night, Marie-Claude heard terrible cries; next morning she learnt that because the gas chambers had run out of Zyklon B pellets, the smaller children had been thrown directly on to the flames. 'When we tell people,' she said to the others, 'who will believe us?'  The Gypsies had many babies while at Auschwitz and the Nazis would bash the baby heads to the wall to kill them.  If a mother fought them, they beat her to death also.

'A Train in Winter'  is written from interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by WWII resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival--and the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.  This was written by Caroline Moorehead.

I had to ask myself.  Would I have been brave enough to be a part of the Resistance or would I have fled to the country  with my children?

The saddest line was  "Didn't we pray enough?"  asked by one of the younger women.