Deborah Pickstone's Reviews > A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France

We have a distance now from WWII and forget, perhaps, the horrors that occurred. Some of them we 'never' knew because they were politically suppressed. This was most true in France where there had been a war-long schism as France divided along the Vichy line into Vichy France and the Zone Libre. After the war it was seen as imperative to quickly create a sense of unity as a nation, to which end a lot of things were swept under a metaphorical carpet. The events of this book form part of that, partly because they involved women and partly because De Gaulle wished for a national amnesia about Franco-German cooperation, preferring to promote an image of brave freedom fighters (the Resistance) betrayed by a mere handful of 'traitors', thus placing France on the side of the angels (that is, the winners). Had events gone the other way I am sure he would have as eagerly promoted the opposite myth.

The writing is a bit stiff but all the same most affecting; who could not be distressed by the torments these brave women went through, leading ultimately to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some survived the war. These formed a part of a huge, often-forgotten group of deportees to the concentration camps; while Jews were the main target and well-documented, there were other groups who the Nazis wanted 'disappeared' - Romani, physical and intellectual 'cripples', homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles in general (so that Aryans would have the space) and the Polish Underground, multi-faith priests and pastors, 'intelligentsia' from many countries and 'dissidents' generally, usually categorised as Communists. Black people were to be sterilised (and presumably returned to slavery).

The more one discovers about the dreadful cruelties practiced by the Nazis in these camps, the more thankful one has to be that they failed, ultimately. Books like this must continue to be written, must continue to inform us, must continue to bring to life what happened


Lest We Forget