10-07-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück' Review: Surviving Together
Cécile Charua, a member of the French resistance who had survived the Nazi camps during World War II, was once asked how she had managed to stay alive. Because, she replied, she was among a group of friends. 'We looked after each other. We minded the deaths of the others as much as we feared our own.'
Lynne Olson's 'The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück' takes as one of its main themes a similar friendship among four Frenchwomen. Members of the resistance in Paris who were caught and deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in late 1943 and early 1944, they, too, looked after each other. Following liberation, they remained close for the rest of their lives.
Ravensbrück, in the north of Germany, was the only camp built by the Nazis specifically for women. Opened in May 1939 to house some 2,000 women, it grew at an alarming rate as Jews and resisters were sent there from occupied Poland and France.
Of the four women featured in Ms. Olson's book, the first to arrive was Germaine Tillion, a 37-year-old anthropologist and member of the Musée de l'Homme resistance network. No match for the highly efficient Gestapo, early resistance groups such as the Musée de l'Homme were quickly tracked down. Seven members were executed.
