Testimony from the Nazi Camps: French Women's Voices

Analyzes an "under-researched" body of concentration camp (mainly Auschwitz, partly Ravensbrück) accounts by French non-Jewish and Jewish women. Deals with ca. 100 published accounts, approximately one-fourth by Jews. Key issues explored are history, memory, and identity. The book's sections relate to textual identity (who wrote the accounts, what are they, when were they written and published, and why were they written), and to deportee identity (gender and sexuality; nationality, class, and politics; Jewish identities; and the case of the well-known writer Charlotte Delbo). Jewish memoirs recall Vichy antisemitism before deportation, as well as the specifics of post-deportation treatment as Jews. Antisemitism was expressed in some camp testimonies by non-Jews in terms of stereotypes, including in reaction to an influx of Jews into the Ravensbrück camp. Expresses surprise that such stereotypes were not expunged when the works were published or republished in the 1980s-90s. Stresses that Delbo was aware of the more difficult position of Jews in the camps than of others, including the non-Jewish French; her accounts were free of antisemitism.