A Book That Will Haunt You

I broke one of my unofficial rules this month. In general, I try to reserve reading about the Holocaust for three summer weeks that are put aside for national mourning in the Jewish calendar. Call it a mental health strategy. Yet, when a request I had placed in the library for The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp by Lynne Olson was filled, I picked it up and found it difficult to put down.

This is not a pleasant book nor a quick read. It is, however, a valuable and worthwhile one. The book focuses on the heroic activities of a number of French women after the Nazis invaded their country, for which they were arrested, imprisoned (often tortured), and eventually sent to the women-only concentration camp, Ravensbrück.

To my embarrassment, I discovered that my perception of Ravensbrũck as a “not as bad as” camp was entirely wrong. First of all, the idea of ranking sadistic actions, lice, typhoid, starvation and other privations is absurd. But there was also much that I didn’t know, and indeed the world doesn’t, since Ravensbrück was liberated after many of the other camps allowing the Germans time to destroy records. The author shares how survivors were distraught as rumors that there had not been a gas chamber in their camp and other attempts at diminishing the evil that occurred there spread after the war.

I had been aware of Dr. Mengele’s inhumane medical “experiments” at Auschwitz. I had been unaware of Dr. Karl Gebhardt and his colleagues who conducted similar brutally sadistic experiments on the women at this camp. Once again, the idea that education leads to moral behavior is laughable. If anything, greater accreditation and scholastic achievement may allow for even greater depravity.

The featured Frenchwomen’s lives and actions, both before being captured and after, hold many lessons for all of us today. Inspired by patriotism, these Catholic women chose to participate in clandestine activities against the Nazis instead of keeping their heads down and waiting for a bad time to pass. They were ‘early adapters’ to resistance; many more men and women only joined once life in France had become less tolerable, including the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of men conscripted for slave labor in Germany as well as the deportation of Jews to death camps.

One theme repeats throughout the book. In the concentration camp, where death was a stark reality and certainly many more died than survived, deep, committed, and self-sacrificing friendships kept women alive. Survival was almost always dependent on someone looking out for you and loving you when you were ill or pinpointed for death, a favor that was returned as needed. After the war, these relationships remained, allowing the women to return as much as possible to a deceptively normal world. It is amazing how many of these women quickly married and had children after their release, a defiant gesture of life. Yet, they were still physically and emotionally fragile and in need of each other’s strength.

The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck raises many uncomfortable questions. How might history be different had more people reacted decisively early on during the Nazi onslaught? Obviously, this is true for leaders like Arthur Seyss-Inquart of Austria, Philippe Pétain of France and Neville Chamberlain of England. But what of millions of regular people? They ended up suffering terribly anyway, whether from hunger, Allied bombings, or other effects of war, but could a resolute response early on have made all the difference? And most importantly for us, what should we be doing today as so many sick ideologies spread even if they haven’t yet harmed us personally?

A less dramatic question also arises. Adversity does strengthen bonds and no one wishes for circumstances such as these women faced. But there is a real danger of today’s culture weakening the ability of even knowing how to form relationships. The emphasis is perverse, on “my fulfillment”, “my needs”, and “my happiness.” Jealousy, anger, and viciousness, three qualities that social media incentivizes, leave many socially naked and bereft. Odds of survival, let alone of thriving under these conditions, are poor at best.

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