Book Review – A Train in Winter – Caroline Moorehead – 2011 – An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, NY 10022
I usually open all my reviews on Holocaust books with a statement of how unique, or impactful, or important is the specific book I am reviewing. And here, with a “A Train In Winter”, I am tempted to open this review the same and everything would be true, but with this book, there is something more, something profound for me, and not just profound for the story it tells, which the story is, but it is more deeply profound for me because of where I am right now in my own life, and because my life – and the lives of all those around me – are becoming more and more engulfed within the chaos and darkness that is surrounding and swirling around us like a cyclone even now as I write.
For this book narrates through the incredible writing skill of Caroline Moorehead, the rise of resistance by a group of ordinary women from very ordinary lives against the then very present dangers and increasing violence and brutality of the German Nazi occupation of France during WWII – a story of unique courage, defiance, and creativity in the multiple forms the struggle evolved into, and the bonds of mutual care, support, and love, forged over the years within the women whose acts formed a core contribution to the essential resistance against the occupation.
Now, this is a book that must be read from the first word of the preface to the last word of the last chapter, to the appendix at the end which lists the woman and the known details of their lives, with the best overall synopsis of the book being the first paragraph of the front inside jacket cover: “They were teachers, students, chemists, writers and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resistors, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled “V” for victory on the walls of her lycée; the oldest, a farmer’s wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.”
The book is written in two parts. Part One has nine chapters. The first chapter begins with the German defeat of France in June 1940, the German occupation of the northern part of France, and the setting up of a French puppet government in southern unoccupied France with the government located in a town named Vichy, headed by Marshal Pétain, a revered hero of WWI. The rest of this chapter then describes the ever-tightening grip and rule of the Germans on both halves of France.
The following seven chapters of Part One describe the women as they enter the narrative, as the events of the occupation, and the arising situations to assist, hide others, or just take simple acts of resistance against the Germans, began to intrude into the circumstances of their ordinary lives. These chapters describe the women’s ages and pursuits, their home life and occupations, and their parents, grandparents, siblings, and children – and their growing understanding that all those close to them, including young children, may pay a price paid for their mother’s, or sister’s, or daughter’s, or their father’s, or dear long-time friend’s, resistance to the occupation and the Nazi oppression growing heavier each day – the price, whatever its manifestation may be, always a possibility, always adding an additional burden and anxiety upon their minds and tasks of resistance.
The chapters of Part One, when introducing the individual women into the narrative, also interweave the familial, political, religious, and patriotic foundations of the resistance, presenting each woman as unique persons with their own lives and stories – stories which then further describe how the women became involved in the various functions of an expanding and more sophisticated and effective resistant. Stories which continue throughout the book to the end – of the lives of the women, or to the end of the book.
Part One also chronologizes the German hunt for the resistors. The Gestapo eventually constructed and coordinated a network of spies and collaborationists assigned to follow, but not yet arrest, suspected resistors by meticulously recording each encounter, however trivial it seemed, with any other person. By following the first suspected resistor and keeping meticulous notes on every contact, that then resulted in following those who began to appear more regularly in the notes, and by following those other new suspected resistors, that then led to even more suspects.
Eventually the Gestapo, using the list of recorded contacts, was able to piece together what appeared to be networks and cells of resistors all over occupied and Vichy France. Then using the lists, they set up traps, which when sprung, worked brilliantly and many arrests were made. And then aided by a judicious use of aggressive interrogation techniques, torture, and announced mass executions of groups of civilian hostages in retaliation for major resistance actions, the Gestapo was able to expand their nets and continued to discover and find and capture and arrest even more resistors, both women and men.
In Chapter 9, after the arrests, the stories continue with the women’s times together in various prisons – the women through their stories now alive and real as individuals, as persons – mothers, neighbors, sisters and classmates, women with husbands, lovers, and, yes, children left behind. And these women, and their stories, and their time imprisoned together, eventually weaved together 230 women who would eventually be deported out of France by train on “Le Convoi des 31000” (Train Convoy # 31000).
And what was the nature of their “crimes”? What had brought them to this point? What were they in life?
“They had sheltered resistors, written and copied out anti-German pamphlets, hidden weapons in shopping bags, helped carry out acts of sabotage… Twelve …. had been passeurs, guiding people across the demarcation line… one doctor …. one dentist …. a midwife … four chemists …. There were farmers, shopkeepers, women who had worked in factories and in the post office, teachers, and secretaries. Twenty-one were dressmakers, were seamstresses. A handful were students. One was a singer. Forty-two described themselves as housewives. Just over half were married and fifty-one had had their husband or lover shot by the Germans. Ninety-nine had between them 167 children, of whom the youngest was a baby of a few months.” (Page 176)
By the end of Chapter nine, the reader will have already come to know all these women as persons, ordinary persons, with ordinary lives before the war. Now as they are loaded onto a train, their lives will again begin to change, to darkly change. The last five pages of Chapter 9 describe in detail the women being packed into a train of cattle cars – Le Convoi des 31000 – and the three-day train ride – thirsty and hungry – to a place unknown – which happened to be Auschwitz, a place of depraved darkness, without light, without …
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Part Two then opens with Chapter 10 describing the arrival at the place of their still unknown destination: “It was not the cold that hit the women as the cattle truck doors were pulled back in the pale light of a Silesian dawn: they were cold already, so cold that almost all feeling had left their bodies. It was the noise. The first sounds were shouts, orders rattled out, fierce and rapid, the German words incomprehensible but the meaning – to hurry, to move, to climb down, to get into line, to leave the heavier suitcases – was plain. More frightening were the sounds made by the dogs, snarling, growling, barking as they pulled on their leads to get at the women.” (page 183)
Part Two then essentially describes just two things – one, the women’s arrival at and descent into the hell of Auschwitz and surviving, or not surviving, the savage brutality of Auschwitz, coupled with the ever-constant search and obsession with food to hold off starvation so as not to appear too skeletal and weak when the selections for the gas chambers were made.
And the second, set against the brutal hellish background of Auschwitz, the ever-increasing support and care and even love of the women for each other, helping, sacrificing, to help others survive in body and also in spirit, always resisting the evil force and power, the demonic spirit of Auschwitz to crush and obliterate the human spirit and soul – the fight to live as human – “remaining me” – within the overwhelming pageant and stench of death all around – a fight only possible within this community of committed love and care.
The brutality written of within the book, is just that, brutal, with brutality so astonishing that some of the women could not even speak for days after witnessing or experiencing it themselves. Some so brutal and shocking to the core, that I will not write of them, but every page, every word of these chapters must be read so that you experience the true full dark flowering of Nazi fascism and fanaticism – where the language of hate and exclusion will always eventually lead.
And one must also read every word of these chapters to understand how the steadfast courage, endurance, and care of the women for each other becomes a bright light within Auschwitz, and a glowing brilliant prism of light for our own times. For if they can survive as courageous and caring human beings, within the very burning pits of hell, then I, and all of us can set our own hearts and minds –and the deepest part of our human soul – to resist all hate, violence, exclusion and violence towards the vulnerable and weak and excluded. To me, this is the profound message of this book written about events more than 80 years ago, of the brilliant spirit of the image and likeness of God imbued into our humanity, shining forth within the worst of the worst darknesses and hells, that evil hardened and cultivated deeply within a human heart has conceived.
Of particular note, is the profound and moving depth of the last chapter, “Slipping into the shadows” which chronologizes the return of some of the 49 women survivors out of the 230 women of “Le Convoi des 31000”.
Two quotes sum up this parched and lonely time for many, if not all, of these survivors – who had survived the physical Auschwitz – but who were still experiencing Auschwitz, but now out of sight deep within themselves.
“What each of the survivors was now faced with was the question of how they would remake their lives, and how they would convey to their families what they had been through. Auschwitz and Ravensbrück … were so extreme, so incomprehensible, so unfamiliar an experience, that the women doubted they possessed the words to describe them, even if people wanted to hear; which, as it turned out, not many did” (page 293)
The very last sentences and words of the entire book read, “So she had decided not to talk any more about Auschwitz. ‘Looking at me, one would think that I am alive … I’m not alive. I died in Auschwitz, but no one knows it.’” (page 317)
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My last word on this book is to let us not ever join in the evil of creating a soul-destroying Auschwitz in our own hearts or in the hearts and minds of others. For an Auschwitz of the heart is built and maintained through the dark language of accusation and blame shifting, exclusion and lies, disdain and belittling, and anger and hate spewing forth from hearts and minds which do not know God, and which do not value the life or existence of another person, of other human beings who share our humanity created in the image and likeness of God.
We need to guard ourselves – our hearts, and ears, and mouth – from these things, from allowing them to entering into us and taking possession. We need to speak against such things. We need to protect others from the harm and anger and destructive intent of such speech. We need to speak – and write – to say no, no more, never again.
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