Train In Winter

They were the courageous women of the French Resistance. Their actions put them in the gravest danger. Their friendship would keep them strong. On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz--the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15, the eldest a farmer's wife of 68; among them were teachers, biochemists, sales girls, secretaries, housewives and university lecturers. Caroline Moorehead's remarkable new book is the story of who these women were, how and why they joined the resistance, how they were captured and treated by the French police and the Gestapo, their journey to Auschwitz and their daily life in the death camps--and about what it was like for the 49 survivors when they returned to France. Six of the women were still alive in 2010 and able to tell their stories of the great affection and camaraderie that took hold among the group. They became friends, and it was precisely this friendship that kept so many of them alive. Drawing on interviews with survivors and their families, on German, French and Polish archives, and on documents held by WW2 resistance organisations, A Train in Winter covers a harrowing part of history but is, ultimately, a portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and endurance, and of the particular qualities of female friendship.