A Train in Winter

Yesterday I finished A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead. I haven't been this affected by a book in a while. It tells the story of over a hundred French women who were part of the resistance when the Nazis occupied Paris, and then were sent to Auschwitz. Only forty of them lived, but that even forty did is incredible. They did it by protecting each other, finding humanity in the very depths of hell, and somehow not losing their will to live.

This book really shook me. I've read my share of World War II books, but the relationship of these women with each other, their sisterhood.... it was so strong. They sustained each other. Through the worst, blackest, cruelest events. One woman was an unofficial "nurse" to the victims of the disgusting medical experimentation that went on for the cause of eugenics and racial cleansing. She would swear that the prisoners were going to recover so they wouldn't be sent to the gas chambers, as happened immediately for anyone perceived too weak to go on.

When another woman was transferred to a small farm near the concentration camp to grow vegetables and other food for the SS, she requested five of her friends be transferred with her. This almost certainly saved their lives, as they were spared from the harsh, hours long roll calls where women collapsed and died daily. Another prisoner was beaten to death for offering a drink of water to a woman on her way to the gas chambers. Lulu, one of the forty to survive, said that she and seven of her friends made it their mission to brief every new arrival to the camp. "We told them that they should never say they were tired, and should do everything they could to appear healthy. We told them to never admit to being Jewish. And we told them about the importance of looking after each other, which was the only way they were likely to survive."

Other women passed around stolen medicine and whispered rumors of Allied forces making advances against Hitler's regime. Songs were punished with beatings, as so many acts of defiance were, but the women found small ways to remember where they were from, to cling on to their humanity even as horror became daily ritual. One women held on to a paper drawing of her son for the entirety of her captivity at Auschwitz, and then for the rest of her life.

These incredible Frenchwomen were just regular people before they joined the resistance and were eventually sent to concentration camps. They were from all walks of life, and then when evil found their country they said, "No more." Even though it cost them their lives, and in my cases the lives of their families. Many families were arrested as units, but only one or two members made it out alive.

On the other side of the coin are the regular people who became Nazis, informers to the Nazis, even prisoners who were elevated to quasi guards. The book was full of horrific scenes that made me feel ill. But this picture affected me the most, because I'd never seen it.

I saw it during my lunch hour at work and I just sat at my desk and stared for three or four minutes. They look so, so happy. Completely carefree. And they're so young. The girl doing the little pose captivates me; she's my age (as were many of the women in the camps). She could be my friend. Auschwitz murdered as many as two thousand people in the gas chambers each day. Each day. Prisoners were beaten to death for as not responding to a command in a language they didn't speak. And there were people who could be part of it and still smile brightly while palling around with their friends on picnics.

The message I took from this book was that the bonds we form with others are the most vital thing there is. Each of the women said that if they had been on their own they would have died. Helene, one of the Frenchwoman, broke her leg the month before the survivors of the camps were rescued. This was a death sentence if any of the guards were to find out, especially so close to the end of the war. (When it became clear the Allies were going to win the war; death numbers at Auschwitz went even higher in a sickening attempt to destroy the evidence of mistreatment.) The other Frenchwomen, who had lost so much and so many, rallied around her to hide and protect her, going so far as to put another dead body in her bed so the guards would stop looking for her. She made it out.

We cannot always change our circumstances, but we can change our relationships with those around us. We can resist evil in the best ways we know, and be there to strengthen each other. We must protect others. Jut this week I listened to this episode from one of my favorite podcasts, Radiolab. There are good people in this world. Let's all be part of it.

"I know that there are those who say: 'they died for precious little.' To such people, one must reply: 'it's that they were on the side of life.'"  --Jean Paulahn, resistance newspaper editor