A Train in Winter

The book A Train in Winter is the story of 230 women in the French Resistance during WWII. They were captured individually or in small groups but left Paris together by train in January 1943 destined for Auschwitz. Forty-nine came home at the end of the war--- an astonishing number given the death rate in Auschwitz.  The youngest was a school girl of fifteen, the oldest a farmer’s wife of sixty-eight. They were teachers, biochemists, sales girls, secretaries, housewives and universities lecturers. The book is about who they were,  why they joined the Resistance, how they were caught and mistreated by the French police, the Gestapo, their journey to Auschwitz and their daily life in the death camps, and about what return to France was like for he forty-nine survivors.

 

How they were received at home was surprising to me. Most never said anything to their families or anyone because 1) they were not believed and were thought to be exaggerating, because if it had been as bad as they said they would not have survived besides people don’t treat other people like that; or 2) the families did not want to hear the stories because it made the families sad that their loved on had gone through such a thing.