Off the Shelf: A Train in Winter

When the Nazis arrived in Paris in June 1940, French citizens were horrified but took a wait-and-see approach to the situation.  The Vichy government advised cooperation with the Germans and in fact, most French didn’t protest the treatment of exiles and Jews in the early days of the occupation. There were those, however, who vigorously objected to the occupation right from the beginning. Many of these resisters were young men and women who had been radicalized in the 1930’s by the Spanish Civil War and who, as the occupation continued, formed a network of factions that supported a range of activities including printing and distributing forbidden tracts, providing safe houses and secreting individuals across the demarcation line to the free zone, and eventually committing acts of sabotage and assassinating German soldiers.  By the spring of 1942, the Gestapo, French police, and civilian collaborators had managed to root out most of these early cells of resisters whom they referred to as terrorists.  Men, women, and teenagers were arrested and tortured in intérrogatories énergiques.  Hundreds of the men were executed, but the women remained imprisoned in Romainville, a French military fort outside of Paris, until January of 1943 when 230 of them were rendered into what the occupiers called the Nacht und Nebel, deportation to Auschwitz and subsequently to Ravensbrück and Mauthausen.  Family and friends of the women had no idea where their wives, daughters, sisters had disappeared to; in fact, at this point in the war, Auschwitz and other extermination camps were unknown outside the Nazi regime.  Fewer than 50 of their loved ones would survive to return home after the war. A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead reveals the story of these 230 women who were transported to Auschwitz in the middle of winter on the only train during the 4-years of German occupation to take women from the French Resistance to the Nazi death camps.
Moorehead begins by introducing dozens of women from all parts of France who participated in the Resistance. As Moorehead moves quickly through the introductory portion of her narrative, I sometimes found it difficult to keep track of these individuals and the passage of time. However, once the women were deported, the focus narrowed, allowing the women to emerge as individuals. I felt I came to know each one intimately – so much so that I didn’t want to lose these women, to stop knowing them, when I reached the end. A Train in Winter is an extraordinary story of bravery and endurance in the midst of unimaginable savagery. Above all, it is the story of abiding devotion these women held for each other and the power of friendship in the face of absolute evil.
Outside of diaries and memoirs, this is the first time these women’s story has been told from the singular perspective of their friendship and the opportunities for survival that friendship afforded. One of the women who survived was Charlotte Delbo who is featured prominently in Moorehead’s book. Charlotte wrote extensively about her experiences as a political prisoner and provided biographical information about the women who endured alongside her. One of her books, Auschwitz and After, is available for check out in Cedar Mill’s collection. You’ll also want to watch the catalog for the addition of a documentary entitled Sisters in Resistance. This film by Maia Wechslera follows four women from before the war to the present. The women speak about what compelled them to resist, their roles in the Resistance, their arrests, deportation and liberation. They talk about the struggle to rebuild their lives after the war and their continued battles in the name of justice.  You can view a 4-minute excerpt from this documentary on YouTube (see above).

Lynne

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