Night and Fog
Publisher
:
Encre marine
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782350880198
Number of pages
:
109
Description
**Violette Maurice’s account has the same structure as Primo Levi’s texts, brief chapters but precise visions of nightmares, exposed serenely without unnecessary lyricism.**
Le Monde
In 1943, Maurice was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Nacht and Nebel (Night and Fog) or N.N. block of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Night and Fog was an instrument of terror, requiring the rounding up of political activists and resistance “helpers.” The camps to which they were sent were primarily for people from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway . . . and eventually turned from instruments of intimidation to places of extermination. In this short and compelling book, Maurice paints the living hell she shared with fellow female prisoners. Describing her life there makes it clear that the human dignity of the victims persisted in the face of atrocities in those, the worst of times.
And yet the survivors, as she let us know in 1946, could never fully leave the camps: “Life can hold on to us at present, but we are, you see, women of the concentration camps, very quickly we became accustomed to the sight of human degradation and the overthrow of spiritual values. We are enslaved to our memories and we can’t do anything about it.”
Author
Marcel Conche :
Marcel Conche is a philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Violette Maurice : Violette Maurice joined the resistance against the Nazis while a student in Lyon. With other students, she founded a clandestine movement called “93.” She was arrested in 1943 by the Gestapo and sent to block N.N. of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After one year she was sent to Mauthausen, from which she was freed by the Red Cross in 1945. In 1947 she received the “médaille de la résistance.” She devoted much of her life to writing memoirs, poetry, and essays about the resistance. Maurice died in November 2008.
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