Auschwitz and After

Description

The memoir of Charlotte Delbo, a French writer sent to Auschwitz for her resistance activities against the Nazi occupation of France and the Vichy government “Delbo’s exquisite and unflinching account of life and death under Nazi atrocity grows fiercer and richer with time.”―Sara R. Horowitz, York University Charlotte Delbo’s moving memoir of life and death in Auschwitz and the postwar trauma of survivors, Auschwitz and After, is now a classic of Holocaust literature. Offering the rare perspective of a non-Jew, Delbo records moments of horror and of desperate efforts at mutual support, of the everyday deprivation and abuse experienced by everyone in the camps, and especially by children. Auschwitz and After conveys how a survivor must “carry the word” and continue to live after surviving one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century. This second edition includes an updated and expanded introduction by Holocaust scholar Lawrence L. Langer. “No memoir of those times is more sensitive and less sentimental.”―Geoffrey Hartman “I find Rosette C. Lamont’s remarkable translation of Charlotte Delbo’s work perceptive, delicate, and poignant, in short: exceptional.”―Elie Wiesel “Delbo’s exquisite and unflinching account of life and death under Nazi atrocity grows fiercer and richer with time. The superb new introduction by Lawrence L. Langer illuminates the subtlety and complexity of Delbo’s meditation on memory, time, culpability, and survival, in the context of what Langer calls the ‘afterdeath’ of the Holocaust. Delbo’s powerful trilogy belongs on every bookshelf.”―Sara R. Horowitz, York University Winner of the 1995 American Literary Translators Association Award Review: Read this Book - This is the second edition so I don't know what, if any, changes there will be. If it's as astonishing as the original then it will be brilliant beyond words of my inadequate prose. Delbo was transported with a group of French resisters, their journey ably covered en-masse in Caroline Moorehead's book A Train in Winter: A Story of Resistance, Friendship and Survival in Auschwitz . Delbo's is a cut above, which would be surprising since it's a cut above almost every other account I have read. Treat yourself to something rare, clear-eyed, unsentimental and amazing; "It's like there's another skin beneath this skin and that skin's called Auschwitz, and you cannot shed it you know...We carry this. I am not like you. You have one vision of life and I have two. I -you know -I lived on two planets...it's like the planet was chopped up into a [normal] part -so-called-normal lives: our lives are not really normal -and this other planet, and we we're herded onto that planet from this one and herded back again, having nothing, virtually nothing in common with the inhabitants of this planet. And we have...we have these double lives and it's too much". Review: I'm glad I read it, but it's pretty harrowing - This book in many ways differs from so many autobiographical works about concentration camps in that it is not narrative. Many of the pieces are more in the nature of vignettes. There is also poetry. But it is poetry which only carries its full meaning if you read the prose. Otherwise it might seem a bit spare and not seem to relate to anything. It is not cheerful, then you wouldn't expect it to be, but it is important. I think some short extracts should be required reading for secondary school students. Just to read her account of extreme thirst alone would be something you could carry forward for the rest of your life. I can't help thinking that it would have some impact on people's actions and their understanding of such regimes, from whatever politics they originate.