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The Nine - a band of daring resistance women.

"What would it mean to live for something".

Gwen Strauss’ The Nine is the true story of nine women who escape from Nazi Germany.

”So here we are: six French, two Dutch, one Spanish. Almost all of us were students or secretaries.”

❑ Hélène Podliasky

❑ Suzanne Maudet

❑ Nicole Clarence

❑ Madelon Verstijnen

❑ Guillemette Daendels

❑ Renée Lebon

❑ Josephine Bordanava

❑ Jacqueline Aubery du Boulley

❑ Yvonne Le Guillou

"Angers stays in my memory as the symbol of suffering itself."

It was almost as if her body was her enemy, making her suffer.

This book is well written and evidently, a lot of research has gone into the writing. At times, the content reminds the reader of Elie Wiesel`s Night. The story is narrated in a captivating way, but sometimes the intensity (of a world war based true story) seems to be missing and the events appear ‘constructed’. The author does state towards the end that she is trained as a poet, is not a historian and had to use imagination to complete the nine women`s story. Also, the people of Germany, particularly at a time of an ongoing brutal war, seem unusually kind and welcoming – many offer these nine foreign women good meals and also the unrestricted use of their laundry to clean themselves and also wash their clothes.

"We get shot in the back, or we make it - either way we will live or die together.”

“In no time we made our decision. We would take our chances. And our luck was that we were young, and there were nine of us.”

“I can no longer feel my freedom as a crystal bowl in my hand but as a matter of course.”

The nine brave women, who were part of different resistance groups are caught, severely tortured and sent to the Leipzig concentration camp, where they all become friends. During a ‘death march*’ in 1945, they all decide to escape from the clutches of the Nazi SS army.

[*Death marches – In 1945, as the Nazis were on the verge of defeat, they organised forced evacuations of concentration camp survivors, so that they don`t fall into the hands of the Allied forces]

In the book, Gwen Strauss covers very well, the lives and suffering that women, in particular, have gone through. [In her article on theconversation.com, Judy Baumel-Schwartz (Director, the Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research) states that in much of the research of the Holocaust, gender has been overlooked. Judy mentions that while men mostly went through physical suffering, women had to also undergo severe psychological damage.]

”The trick was to fall asleep with the memory of the smell and the flavours before the hunger surged back and gripped your insides.”

“It became a favourite pastime, imagination mixed with saliva.”

It is heart-wrenching to read about the terrible pain and suffering these brave women were put to. They used to ‘fill’ their hungry tummies by discussing food recipes and other good things in life. The togetherness among these women is very well narrated.

The highlight of this book is the details about the way women were treated by the armed forces of all sides, including the Germans, the Soviets and the Americans. Women were, as not much has changed even today, considered as objects that are willing and easy to be raped. The soldiers of Germany, the Soviet Union and America brutally raped and grossly mistreated all the women – civilians, prisoners and camp inmates. As the author mentions, most of the soldiers went unpunished for the crimes they have committed.

“Marriages were called off because it would bring shame to a family to accept a woman who had been in the camps; they were no longer considered pure.”

Men were considered as prisoners of war and given medals and recognition, whereas women were treated terribly and many families disowned them.

“How do we hold on to the past`s truths without letting the past hold us back from living in the present.”

***

“And they sang the ‘Chant des Adieux’ to the tune of Auld Lang Syne…”
“Must we part without hope,
Without hope of returning,
Must we part without hope,
Of seeing each other again.
It`s only a goodbye, my brothers,
It`s only a goodbye.
Yes, we will see each other again, my brothers,
It`s only a goodbye. "