Moving. . . . Absorbing. . . . When acts of resistance are described, inspirational.” — The New York Review of Books As for the camp's maternity ward, one can easily guess what happened to pregnant women as soon as their pregnancies were ascertained, or after they'd given birth to their babies.

Caroline, an American actress with ancestral ties to France, who works in the French Consulate in New York. and when they come to judgement, let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness." [48] See also [ edit ] Johanna Langefeld had come with a small advance party of guards and prisoners to bring equipment and look around the new women’s concentration camp; the camp was due to open in a few days’ time and Langefeld was to be the Oberaufseherin – chief woman guard. She had seen inside many women’s penal institutions in her time, but never a place like this.Meanwhile, as Miriam learns about the woman her father once loved, she's trying to escape from the man she no longer loves - her husband and abuser, Axel. He's a controlling and violent man who has built a network of lies to support the image of his wife as weak, insane and unable to look after herself. Can learning of the courage of others so many years before help Miriam to find her own courage to say "No" to Axel? Henryk is Miriam's father. He is reminiscing about meeting Frieda, a student of his. All of Henryk's thoughts are from the past. He is now dying and wondering whatever became of Frieda. He needs to find out to have closure. If this is a woman took me a while to read. And most of you will know by now that I can have a bit of a habit of speed reading through the boring bits of a book, or if the topic just doesn't grab me at the time. "If this is a woman" demands to be read, and even through the hardest parts to read, Sarah Helm commands respect for the material at hand. Möller, Barbara (30 August 2014). "Sie waren Mörderinnen aus Gelegenheit". Die Welt (in German). Die Hyäne von Auschwitz . Retrieved 25 January 2021.

Martha Hall Kelly’s prose and style are both just beautiful. It’s a style that both stands separate from the plot and also enlightens and enhances it. I often paused to admire a particular phrase or a gorgeous description or a well expressed emotion. This is the type of language that I just want to read slowly to soak up. Helm knows this, and makes an incredible effort to corroborate where she can, using not only her contemporary witnesses, but the transcripts from war crimes trials, extant letters and documents, German admissions, and even Himmler’s diary. Contemporaneamente alla vicenda di Miriam, l’autrice ci racconta la storia dal punto di vista di Henrik, professore universitario. Siamo nel 1942, il paese sta precipitando nella morsa nazista, gli ideologi e i dissidenti politici finiscono in campo di concentramento; l’incontro e l’appassionante innamoramento con Frieda una studentessa promettente e appassionata non fa che accelerare la rovina per lui e per la sua amante che continua a frequentare sotto gli occhi di Emilie, una moglie terrorizzata ma non rassegnata a lasciar andare il marito. Dr. Gil David The Brilliant Code Used by Concentration Camp Inmates to Tell the World About Nazi Experiments Haaretz 18 May 2019.Shute, Joe (14 Mar 2013), "The Secrets of the Second World War Comet Line are revealed", The Telegraph, accessed 12 Oct 2019. Fascinating. . . . Achieves just the right balance of judgment, fearlessness and restraint.”— San Francisco Chronicle Buber-Neumann, Margarete (January 2008). Under Two Dictators. Random House UK. p.162. ISBN 9781845951023. Ms Helm chronicles the world these women existed in with a voice that begs us all to listen. Her interviews with the survivors, some of them the Polish “rabbits”, others Russian communists who suffered even more at the hands of their own compatriots under Stalin post-war, among others, & the surviving SOE agents, was incredible reading. I can never feel what they felt, but Ms Helm tells us to try, and to never forget.

For three women living through World War II, the threat of war poses very separate issues - that is, until their lives become intertwined in the most tragic of circumstances. I was also surprised by the many conversations recounted in the book. Were these conversations an invention of the author or reconstructed from a survivors' memory? While the conversations certainly added to the readability of the book, they are questionable as reliable facts. The Germans never raped the prisoners because we were Russian swine, but our own soldiers raped us. We were disgusted that they behaved like this. Stalin had said that no soldier should be taken prisoner, so they felt they could treat us like dirt."

What stood out for me were the relationships - the real friendships --(women bonding), that developed ...creating the possibility for an optimistic way of being.

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( July 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Miriam finds an Auschwitz tattoo on her father's wrist, under his watchband and he starts calling out for 'Frieda'. I nearly gave up at this point as I've seen a lot of photos of Auschwitz tattoos and they were never neat little wrist tattoos. More typically they were sprawling characters on the outer or inner forearm. This had me doubting the likely veracity of the rest of the book but once things got moving, I soon forgot. The point of the revelation of the tattoo is that we're supposed to believe that Henryk NEVER told his daughter that he'd been in the camp. He wasn't a Jew or a gypsy so Miriam wonders why he was there. As readers, we know because we're reading Henryk's thoughts about Frieda, the girl he loved and for whom he risked his marriage and lost his career. The individual stories of day to day life are at times so horrific that you simply want to look away and yet there are examples of such uplifting courage in the face of death that are truly inspirational. Between 120 and 140 Romani women were sterilized in the camp in January 1945. All had been deceived into signing the consent form, having been told by the camp overseers that the German authorities would release them if they complied. [ citation needed] Forced labor [ edit ]Have you ever heard of the “Rabbit Girls?” I would imagine most reading this review, have not. Neither had I. Unfortunately they are forgotten women of WWII.