A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France by Caroline Moorehead

Jan 26, 2013 Christie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: world-war-ii, memoir

A very fascinating and well written account of 230 women from France that stood up and took part in the Resistance. The book follows them on the journey of German occupation of France to their fate up to and after the liberation of the concentration camps. The author did what great authors do and that is impose thought and reflection on what you've read. There were a lot of questions that were raised for me that will give cause to research and learn more about the many topics discussed. I think...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Chrissie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: france, poland, bio, history, sample-g, audio, germany

ETA: please see message 27 below. This is a concise summary of my view:
I am glad I read it, but I do believe it has too many problems to give it more stars. I am glad I learned about this French group of women - particularly since I live and spend time in France! I also appreciated that the French behavior during the war is shown honestly. Many of them supported Pétain. This is not washed over. I also found the info about Mengele's experiments both riveting and horrible. I just wish I had come t...more

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Feb 01, 2012 Melissa Prange rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical

A Train in Winter tells the fascinating story of the French resistance during World War II. The author, Caroline Moorland, focuses her book on the women of the French resistance. These women might not wield guns or plant bombs, but they do house refugees in their hotels, print papers in their basements, and hand out flyers in the streets. These women chose to risk their lives rather than run to safety or simply endure. The women are grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and children, and all are dra...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: culture-and-society

Proving that friendship prevails in such hard times, this book is uplifting and inspiring. It also provides a graphic reminder of how inhumane the human race can be to each other.

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May 30, 2012 Rita-Marie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, international-quagmire, francofile-fiend

Whoa. It's been awhile since I've "missed" a book after I've finished it and sobbed while reading it. A meticulously researched work that was eye opening w/insights about occupied France and the role of the resistance. I was blown away by what the human spirit can endure. I think everyone wonders what they would do when put in extraordinary circumstances and this book served as a testament to spectrum of the nature of the human animal while capturing the bonds of friendships and the horrors of W...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the story of over 200 women who were active in the Resistance during the Occupation of France starting in 1940. The women were captured and put in jail, and later transported to concentrations camps (Birkenau and Ravensbruck). The book begins by introducing the women and describing the type of work they did in the Resistance (many were couriers, some helped with printing and distributing underground newspapers, some offered safe houses for people on the run, others helped people cross th...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Guyon Turner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-history

A compelling book with certain ironies, compared with others of its genre:

1. The bulk of the women portrayed (all were women) were educated French resisters with an Aryan background;

2. Many were Parisian Communists who had worked together as part of the Resistance movement; therefore many knew and supported each other through their ordeals, likely saving many of their lives;

3. Few were Jewish. Therefore, they were sent early on to "prison/labor" camps rather than directly to extermination camps....more

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Mar 08, 2013 Hannah M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-read, history, non-fiction, review-copy

In January 1943 two hundred and thirty women who had bravely fought as a part of the French Resistance were sent to Auschwitz. These were women who spanned many occupations and age groups, who fought for many different reasons. Yet, they all had one thing in common… They wanted to free their country from German rule. A Train in Winter is the story that illustrates just what these women endured.

The book starts out a bit slow, but Moorehead does a great job of setting the stage for the reader and...more In January 1943 two hundred and thirty women who had bravely fought as a part of the French Resistance were sent to Auschwitz. These were women who spanned many occupations and age groups, who fought for many different reasons. Yet, they all had one thing in common… They wanted to free their country from German rule. A Train in Winter is the story that illustrates just what these women endured.

The book starts out a bit slow, but Moorehead does a great job of setting the stage for the reader and introducing many of the players involved. Regardless of the opening, the book really starts to set its hooks into you after the first few chapters. It is nearly impossible to set the book down once you start to read about what these women sacrificed for their cause, the fear they overcame in order to do what they felt was necessary.

Moorehead does not shy away from the cruel or the heartbreaking. Having met with a few of the survivors still alive, the families of survivors who have since passed, and much research into the topic, she paints a brutally honest picture of the events surrounding the capture and subsequent encampment of these women. What they had to undergo is not something that’s easy to digest, but then the story wouldn’t mean nearly as much without being so true to what she learned about their experiences.

If the stories from the survivors didn’t make the book real enough, the pictures included in the book certainly serve to make the story that much more real and unforgettable. You are able to put faces to names and picture the torturous conditions all the more clearly. When you learn that only forty-nine of the two hundred and thirty women are able to make it out of the camps alive it really hits home.

A Train in Winter is not a book you are going to read and forget about, it is a book that is going to stay with you and make you realize just what we are capable of even in the worst possible conditions. This is the story of women who were stronger than most people will ever have to be and who supported each other in an attempt to survive the cruelest conditions a person could find themselves in. In one sentence, this is a book that everyone should read.

** I received a copy of this book from the publisher as a part of TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.(less)

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Feb 11, 2013 The Book Maven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

This nonfiction piece lacked the same easy readability that other nonfiction authors (i.e., Laura Hillenbrand and Erik Larson) have achieved, so that's why I deducted a star. Other than a few tedious moments, however, this was a really rather pleasurable nonfiction read.

Excuse me--I should qualify that with the follow-up statement of, as pleasurable a read as the subject matter allows.

A Train in Winter follows the fates of over three hundred females who were arrested and punished for their activ...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Brian T rated it 4 of 5 stars

France was a total dichotomy during World War II. For a country that was so quickly overrun by the Germans, with a populace that was largely anti-Semetic to begin with, and very complicit with the demands of their captors after their defeat, there were remarkably strong freedom cells throughout the country, and their subterfuge greatly aided the Allies before D-Day changed the course of he war.

This is the story of a number of women who played varying roles in the defense of liberty and freedom a...more

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Jan 02, 2013 H rated it 3 of 5 stars

A heartbreaking book about 230 French women, accused of being part of the Resistance in WWII, who were sent to Auschwitz under the "Night and Fog" program, where enemies of the Nazis and Vichy were sent into the east to disappear. Most of the women were indeed Communists, resisters and often both, but some never discovered why they were arrested, while others simply said the wrong thing to the wrong person. At the end of the war, 42 of the women had survived. Sprawling in scope, the first 100-15...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Kathleen Hagen added it

Shelves: 2012-audio-books

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, by Caroline Moorehead, Narrated by Wanda McCaddum, Produced by Blackstone Audio, Downloaded from Audible.com.

Publisher’s note says it as well as I can:
They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives - a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi
leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, spirited Jews to safety, transported weapons...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Sherrie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've always been a person who believes in "playing by the rules", who believes that laws are there for a good reason, who often resists change. This horrifying book put me in the very uncomfortable position of wondering if I would have had the courage and fortitude to do what these women did for something I believed in. They defied the Nazis, mostly in small but vital ways, and they paid dearly. Those not killed outright were taken away to prison camps, where they underwent such brutal mistreatm...more

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Dec 22, 2012 Betty Benjamin bruneau rated it 4 of 5 stars

Have just completed this book and had a difficult time determining a star rating. It is the true story of female French resistance workers during the German occupation of France and their treatment at the hands of not only the Germans but also the French government. The account follows the group of women who were rounded up and taken by train to a camp where they were subjected to the horrors we've all read about that were happening in the concentration camps. What made this story different from...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

This unusual book is a study of French women who ended up in captivity, either in French prisons, or in concentration camps, during WWII. Their crimes can be loosely defined as "resistance activities", which, in Nazi eyes, included such minor transgressions as a teenaged girl writing "Vive Les Anglais" on a wall.

The book makes an attempt to offer a comprehensive, systematic description of the French Resistance, but the narrative is inevitably incomplete. Most of these groups espoused the Commun...more This unusual book is a study of French women who ended up in captivity, either in French prisons, or in concentration camps, during WWII. Their crimes can be loosely defined as "resistance activities", which, in Nazi eyes, included such minor transgressions as a teenaged girl writing "Vive Les Anglais" on a wall.

The book makes an attempt to offer a comprehensive, systematic description of the French Resistance, but the narrative is inevitably incomplete. Most of these groups espoused the Communist concept of isolated cells, with minimal interaction between the cells, and of course, many Resistance fighters died before their history could be taken down. So we are left with a series of individual stories, often limited to "she was a courier", or "she would take underground newspapers around", or " she was involved in helping people across the border". Although these individual stories were compelling enough, the lack of a coherent story was a disappointment to me.

The women are followed from their initiation into the clandestine world of the Resistance, through their arrest, to their stays in French hospital, and then their final destiny in Birkenau and Auschwitz. Reader beware! These stories are brutal, beyond shocking. Even people who have read Primo Levi, Bruno Bettelheim and WWII histories will be horrified. I confess to skipping pages in this part of the book, and I made sure to hide this book in my bedside table, so that my young son wouldn't happen upon it. Heart-wrenching, truly horrifying stories of brutality and cruelty and total absence of empathy.

One of the themes of the book is about the friendship between some of the women and how they managed to help each other out, even in the most desperate conditions. Some women hid their ailing friends because they knew that those appearing sick would be immediately sent into the gas chambers. Others tried to steal food or clothes. One woman, a psychiatrist, was forced to assist with the ghastly medical experiments conducted in the concentration camps, until she took a stand and refused. This would have meant certain death, but an infirmary assistant managed to make it appear she had died during the night by putting a cadaver in her bed. A countrywoman would identify edible weeds during forays into the forest, thereby adding some precious nutrients to the starvation diet. The intellectuals amongst the women organized classes and taught languages, science, even put on remembered plays. This, by the way, was also described by Bruno Bettelheim.

When at last the camps are liberated, only a few women have survived. The reader is rooting for happy endings for them, but of course they come back to find their young children not recognizing them, their parents ailing, their husbands dead and their homes destroyed. Most of them remained so traumatized by their war experiences that their subsequent lives were far from happy.

This book was a strange mix of the absolutely depressing (the camps, the traitors, the collaborators) and the uplifting (people helping each other out in the worst possible circumstances).

Bottom line : a very well researched, detailed history of the (often overlooked) women in the French resistance. The reader should be aware that gruesome descriptions of the camp are plentiful in the second part. My main critique would be that there are so many individual women in the book that it is hard to follow them all. Several of them have the same name, so it became difficult to figure out which Madeleine was being discussed. At the very end of the book, I discovered that there was a listing of each woman, with a few lines of information. It would have been much easier if that section had been placed at the beginning of the book, so that the reader could go back and refresh his/her memory whenever another name popped up. (less)

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Dec 16, 2012 Barbara Green rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought long and hard on how to score this book which I have to say is one of the most depressing I've read in a long time. Yes it's about friendship and survival. Yes it's incredible the amount of detail the author goes into and the amount of research she has done. However, this is not a pleasure, nor could it be a pleasure in my opinion to read. I did not come to A Train In Winter as a WWII virgin. I have read much about the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime. I know that there were i...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Bap rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, world-war-ii

This is not a easy book. Not a joy to read. But it is sneeringly honest, an account of 230 French woman who are engaged in resistance activities in France. Some of the offenses where trivial such as graffiti on a wall, others smuggled Jews to Vichy, Italy, or Spain. Still others gathered guns for attacks on Germans. Many were devout communists who after June of 1941 and the invasion of Russia viewed resistance as a holy cause. Some worked with their husbands, lovers, brothers, and parents. They...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France is proof that a book can be both heart-breaking and uplifting. It is the the story of the woman behind the French resistance to the Nazis, women who worked in secret, died in secret, and were mostly unheralded for their work. But most importantly, it is the story of their friendship, their camaraderie, and how it quite literally saved their lives.

The story really has 3 parts: the resistance, the cam...more A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France is proof that a book can be both heart-breaking and uplifting. It is the the story of the woman behind the French resistance to the Nazis, women who worked in secret, died in secret, and were mostly unheralded for their work. But most importantly, it is the story of their friendship, their camaraderie, and how it quite literally saved their lives.

The story really has 3 parts: the resistance, the camps and the aftermath. It begins in June, 1940, with the German takeover of Paris. It was fairly quiet, the fighting already over and the Nazis simply coming in to take possession of the city. The political climate was charged with controversy — Marshal Petain’s Vichy government more concerned with collaboration and pandering than liberation, a vigorous Communist faction that was strongly opposed to collaboration, and the majority of the French people caught between.

This isn’t history that I’m terribly familiar with, only in a very general way, and the stories and anecdotes about life under occupation were interesting and enlightening. The Germans lived like princes in the best houses, with the best food, while the Parisians stood in ration lines and stuffed their coats with newspaper to keep warm. That’s an excellent way to stir up resentment and resistance, and the existing Communist party — already used to protesting and keeping a low profile — gave it structure.

These women were involved in all sorts of resistance activities. They acted as couriers, sometimes leaving small children at home while they bicycled across the country, carrying money, weapons and anti-German tracts and newsletters. The punishments, if they were caught, could be severe, but at least in the beginning, no one suspected that pretty young women could be political activists and they took advantage of that. They dressed up, they flirted with the German officers, and they flew below the radar for a very long time.

Their bravery was born in part of naivete. They simply could not fathom that the Germans would imprison or execute them. They expected to be arrested, to be interrogated, to be held for short periods of time, but they seemed certain that no one would imprison a mother with young children — who would do such a thing? So while I commend their bravery, I sometimes cringed at their foolishness.

Eventually, they were rounded up, a result of intensive efforts by the German police and the French collaborators. They made their way through a series of more and more serious incarcerations and increasingly dismal conditions, before being shipped off to Poland, to the fort at Romainville, and eventually to Auschwitz. they would eventually become known as Le Convoi des 31,000. There were 230 women from all walks of life: students, chemists, writers and housewives; schoolgirls, an opera singer, a dentist. Only 49 would survive.

What you see most clearly is that this was not survival of the fittest; this was survival of the most cohesive. their friendship literally saved their lives. In Auschwitz, the weakest were pulled out of lines and executed. The women of Le Convoi protected their wick and injured. They pooled their food. The risked their lives to keep the others safe. They conspired to steal food and medication, at great personal risk. They found hiding places for the injured, to keep them out of the sight of the Nazis. They kept each other’s spirits high and provided what comfort they could, in conditions most people cannot imagine.

They came home to a mixed welcome, not unlike our returning Vietnam vets, years later. The country had changed and they had changed. People did not really want to hear about their suffering — they wanted to forget and get on with their lives. And when Charles de Gaulle and the French government celebrated the heroes of the resistance, the women were mostly forgotten…but they never forgot each other.

I can’t easily express how moved I was by this book. Women form friendships differently than men, I think, and we nurture them in different ways. Quite simply, without their friends, these women would have died. They lived because they had friends to rely on, and they placed tremendous importance on the group surviving to tell their story. Selfishness and looking out for number one would have meant certain death.

Countless times throughout the book, the women sing to lift their spirits and to show their resistance. The Marsellaise, the French national anthem, is sung so many times in the book that I caught myself humming it as I read.(less)

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Sep 25, 2012 JoEllen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I did not like this book. And yet I wept. I complained to my friends while reading this book. And yet it accomplishes what no other book I have read about the WWII German killing machine has ever achieved. This book introduces you to over 200 women; French communists, non-Jews. They were betrayed by their fellow French, rounded up, and landed in one packed trainload, in the camps.

Most authors handle the mass horror by tracking an individual. A family. Stray characters come in and drift out of th...more

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Jul 06, 2012 David Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having just put down this book it's difficult for me to marshal my thoughts for a considered review simply because of the impact this harrowing account has had on me emotionally and psychologically. It has left me weeping for the unimaginable cruelty humans are capable of wreaking on their fellows, and my heart full for the extraordinary sacrifices and selfless kind acts that others have been prepared to make in the face of such barbarity even while victims themselves, imprisoned in a man-made h...more Having just put down this book it's difficult for me to marshal my thoughts for a considered review simply because of the impact this harrowing account has had on me emotionally and psychologically. It has left me weeping for the unimaginable cruelty humans are capable of wreaking on their fellows, and my heart full for the extraordinary sacrifices and selfless kind acts that others have been prepared to make in the face of such barbarity even while victims themselves, imprisoned in a man-made hell.

My World War II reading has been patchy, and I'd read nothing in any detail about the occupation of France or the Resistance before opening Caroline Moorhead's book. I was astonished, in the first section, to learn of the degree of collaboration the Germans had from the French, especially the police and the petty authorities, not only in Vichy but across the country. Was it fear, or is evil so easily transferable, people so culpable and corruptible? Surely not just fear judging by the relish for violence and denunciation that comes through these early chapters.

And yet what risks the resisters were prepared to take in their struggle against the Nazis. Moorhead acknowledges that most of the women who became involved - whether as disseminators of resistance literature, 'passeurs' for the escapees, hiders of weapons or even directly as sabouteurs and guerrillas - were terrified; but they carried on through all their fears without reward. The majority were part of a family of resisters and many saw husbands, fathers, brothers deported or shot for their own acts of defiance, but they carried on regardless, even redoubling their own efforts as if to make up the loss. Inevitably they were caught themselves, or denounced by neighbours, and bundled onto the transports heading east to the concentration camps along with Jews, homosexuals, criminals, and some who had nothing to do with the Resistance at all, but who may have made the mistake of passing an opinion unfavourable to their occupiers, or been maliciously denounced by a jealous neighbour or business competitor.

If conditions in occupied France were dreadful, nothing could have prepared them (or us) for what they encountered in the camp at Auschwitz. Moorhead spares no detail in her descriptions of the filth, the crowding, the denial of life's basics, the unrelieved and pointless labour in the bedraggled cold, and above all the unending cruelty, inhuman violence and savage murder that led to a litter of disregarded corpses, the miasma of death and a growing swamp of mass graves. What makes the account heartbreakingly poignant as well as horrifying is that we follow named women among the 200-odd French contingent of 'Le Convoi des 31000' and watch many of them sink and die, others mutilated or brutally murdered, and steadily the band decreases.

What saves us from utter despair is exactly what saved some of the women - the individual selfless acts and the support network they provided for each other. Early on the indomitable members of the French group persuaded the others that 'everyone for themselves' could end only in the elimination of all. Instead they looked out for each other, often taking the same risks as they did in France, protecting and hiding the weaker members from the guards and saving them from execution or the gas chamber, sharing food, nursing them through the worst of their illnesses. With this combination of friendship, comfort and help, rather than through luck or miracle, some of the women survived - 42 of the original group.

The book has no fairytale ending. Most of the survivors came back to find that husbands and other family members had been shot or perished in their own camp travails. Many of the women had illnesses that dogged them for the rest of their lives, and several died early. Only seven were still alive when work started on the book in 2008, and only four on its completion. Some were given credit and honours by the post-war French government, but there was surprising indifference to their stories for the most part, and a general unwillingness to dwell on this dark chapter of human history. The majority of the women, who had lived only for the dream of returning home, reported a flatness and a continuing unhappiness after they did.

An appendix summarises not only what happened to the survivors after the war, but also records as far as possible how each of the women who did not make it met her end. It's a sad, sad catalogue, but a valuable record. Equally important, some of the women have written their own accounts and memoirs of their time in the camps and after. Caroline Moorhead has drawn on these extensively and acknowledges the fact along with a long list of helpers throughout her painstaking research.

I have not read the first-hand accounts of the survivors, but I'm sure that this powerful account is faithful to their memories, and stands as a hugely important testament in its own right. The final message I will take from this fine book is an optimistic one - that even in the midst of hideous cruelty there is to be found compassion, kindness and courage. (less)

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Mar 25, 2012 Felicity rated it 2 of 5 stars

In many ways, this book deserves a much higher rating. Moorehead reconstructs the lives (as best she can based on remaining historical evidence) of French women sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, specifically the women of Convoy 31000 (the number of the convoy that shuttled them from Paris to the camps and seared into their flesh forever as tattoos). Most of the women on the convoy were political prisoners: women who had been members of the Resistance or via other means, quest...more In many ways, this book deserves a much higher rating. Moorehead reconstructs the lives (as best she can based on remaining historical evidence) of French women sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, specifically the women of Convoy 31000 (the number of the convoy that shuttled them from Paris to the camps and seared into their flesh forever as tattoos). Most of the women on the convoy were political prisoners: women who had been members of the Resistance or via other means, questioned the absolute authority of the Reich in France. Only a handful were Jewish (a fact they kept well hidden) and many were Communist. A few had even informed on the Resisters.

Moorehead's description and recreation of the conditions and atrocities that the women endured (or in most cases, did not) in the concentration camps is harrowing. It's one of the compelling descriptions I've read, its power only enhanced by the fact that what she writes about actually happened (it's not a fictional recreation). But it's not until the final third of the book that Moorehead really gets to the meat of her account: what these woman endured at the hands of the SS and the Gestapo (amongst others) at Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. Much of the material up to that point is an account of the circumstances that got them there: incredibly detailed descriptions of the resistance activities in which the women were involved and how they were caught. I found myself getting bogged down in the incredible detail. While I appreciate Moorehead's desire to be comprehensive and give each woman her due, I became lost in the detail of 200+ women's lives.

Moorehead has two main themes in her book. The first she takes pains to identify is the extent of French collaboration (mainly via the police) with the Germans in identifying and rounding up these women (and therefore being ultimately responsible for sending them to the camps and almost certain death). Her second theme illuminates the way in which the women survived first the French prisons and later the camps, and the extent to which this experience was gender-specific. Barely a quarter of the women in the convoy ultimately survived the camps. Moorehead argues that while luck played a significant role for these survivors, it was also their commitment to each other and to helping each other survive. The bonds of female friendship prompted the women to hide their sick friends from Nazi inspections designed to weed out the infirm for the gas chambers, and to the pooling of scarce food resources and medical supplies so they could help each other survive wherever possible. The women were, Moorehead argued, committed to sending back survivors so that they could bear witness to what they had seen, endured, and survived.

It's a draining book, but one worth persevering with. (less)

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Mar 08, 2012 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a hard book to read.

Hard because of the brutal conditions described but worthy of being read, nonetheless.

I do feel the subtitle: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France is a little misleading. It gives the impression that the story takes place entirely in France. Much, however, deals with conditions in several concentration camps.

That aside, it is difficult not to get caught up in the harsh reality of what these women experienced.

Though it is chall...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Susan Jaffe added it

This is a story of survival, friendship, brutality. It's the story of a group of French women, active in the Resistance during WW II, who were captured by the French police (collaborators), were sent to Birkenau then to Auschwitz & Ravensbruck. The strength of their friendship helped at least some of them survive the horrific years in those camps. The few who survived maintained their friendship in the years that followed, but their lives were, naturally, forever changed.
The author does not...more

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Feb 21, 2012 Colleen Turner rated it 4 of 5 stars

I reviewed this book for www.luxuryreading.com.

On January 24th, 1943, 230 women boarded a train in France, bound for the unknown. They ranged in age from fifteen to over sixty and encompassed positions in society from school girls to furriers to farmers’ wives to doctors and chemists. Most, on the surface, seemed to have little in common. What united them was much deeper and much more binding.

These women found themselves imprisoned together for their various resistance acts against the German in...more I reviewed this book for www.luxuryreading.com.

On January 24th, 1943, 230 women boarded a train in France, bound for the unknown. They ranged in age from fifteen to over sixty and encompassed positions in society from school girls to furriers to farmers’ wives to doctors and chemists. Most, on the surface, seemed to have little in common. What united them was much deeper and much more binding.

These women found themselves imprisoned together for their various resistance acts against the German invaders that had taken over France upon their occupation on June 14th, 1940. And all would have to cling together as strongly as possible in order to survive what lay ahead of them at the end of their train ride: the death and work camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Ravensbruck. Their united strength, intelligence and determination to live and tell others of the horror they have witnessed, experienced and survived led to forty-nine of these brave 230 coming home to France in the summer of 1945.

A Train in Winter is a remarkable story that not only brings attention to this specific group of women and what they went through under the Nazi regime but the bigger picture of the French Occupation, the French Resistance and the other men and women, many communists but not all, who were determined to fight for what they saw as right and to reclaim the country that was theirs. It also brought into the light, using stark and blunt writing, the true horrors of what the people of Europe, from many countries, religions and political beliefs, experienced in the various Nazi concentration camps.

I was absolutely enamored with these women, their friends and families and with the bravery they all exuded when so many others would have, and some did, give in to the Germans. Faced with such extreme degradations, brutality and hatred inflicted on them they managed to maintain their morality and defiance and banded together to save those they could and never forget those they couldn’t.

In no way can A Train in Winter be looked at as a happy, uplifting read. What this book is is a testament to strength, friendship and the ability to maintain a core set of beliefs even when in hell. It is fully apparent that Caroline Moorehead not only did extensive research but interviewed survivors and their family members and enclosed their lives and words into the story. She makes you feel like you are witness to these atrocities right along with the women, making for a heart-wrenching experience. I don’t believe I will ever forget these women and what they did for what they felt as right.(less)

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Feb 12, 2012 Kristin Strong rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-war-ii

A fascinating, heartbreaking, engrossing book about 230 courageous Frenchwomen, arrested and imprisoned for anti-Nazi activities, then transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The fates of many of the women come as no surprise; the miracle is that 49 of them survived horrible conditions, supported each other through the most unthinkable circumstances, avoided the gas chambers, and eventually returned to France. The author does a creditable job of rendering as many women as possible as developed charac...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book (as much as you can say that) and it was refreshing (as much as you can say that) to read a story of WW2 from a different perspective. It is often from the Jewish, allied troops (especially American) or the heroics of the resistance. This book talks about the latter but rather than the actions of them and how they "saved France" it talks about the women who were captured and their experience. I think any book that deals with this sort of material will always make you think how...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Carl Brookins rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book falls under the heading of true crime. It deals with mass murder, attempted genocide and a side of France in the 1940’s that is generally not well-known. This is also one of the most difficult and amazing books I have ever had the privilege of reading. This is, as the cover states, “an extraordinary story of women, friendship and resistance in occupied France.”

In mid-June, 1940, the German army occupied Paris and France fell. There was, for a while, a partition, Vichy France under the...more This book falls under the heading of true crime. It deals with mass murder, attempted genocide and a side of France in the 1940’s that is generally not well-known. This is also one of the most difficult and amazing books I have ever had the privilege of reading. This is, as the cover states, “an extraordinary story of women, friendship and resistance in occupied France.”

In mid-June, 1940, the German army occupied Paris and France fell. There was, for a while, a partition, Vichy France under the aging Marshall Petain. At first, relations between the occupiers and the subjugated French were almost cordial. During the next two years many of France’s second-class citizens, it’s women, took up the battle and became foundations and facilitators of the much celebrated French Resistance, all over the nation. It’s noteworthy that French women were denied the privilege of voting until 1944. Ironically, dismissive attitudes toward women worked to their advantage as they became top organizers and couriers in the resistance.

Gradually, informers and collaborators working with the Gestapo amassed evidence of women’s activities, arresting and gathering women into prisons. In January, 1943, 230 women, the youngest 15, the oldest in her sixties, were loaded into cattle cars and shipped east, to Auschwitz. Only 49 survived to the end of the war. This is the well-documented story of those women.

The author has, through extensive archival research, personal interviews with survivors, and family members, and the development of original sources, pieced together the individual and collective stories of these ordinary yet incredible women. The stories are set against the political and the social turmoil of the times. The women, from all classes of society across the political and social spectrums, bonded together to support one another in fighting for their survival. They had no weapons save their wits, their intelligence and their essential humanity, against a huge and terrible effort to obliterate them. Only a few were Jews. That any survived is testament to their grit, their determination and their mutual support.

This work is meticulously documented with an extensive bibliography, source notes by chapter, and short biographies of the women who live again in these pages. Moorehead’s tone is straightforward; no hysteria, no loud condemnations, there are no exclamation points. But the book, in the weight of its facts here illuminated, is condemnatory. It condemns Nazis, the Gestapo, and French collaborators as well as the post-war government of France which preferred to forget much of the pestilence that came with the occupying German army.

This is a book that should be read by anyone with the slightest interest in human rights and human history. It throws a bright light on an aspect of World War II in Europe little known or studied. And the book is a reminder that we who ignore the lessons of history will inevitably suffer repetition of those devastations.

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Dec 11, 2011 Catherine rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical

During the WWII occupation of France, the Gestapo imprisoned 230 women who were active in the French resistance. In 1943 they were moved to Birkenau, the women’s prison at Auschwitz.

The first part of the book covered the women’s personal lives, involvement in the resistance, and arrest. Later, describing their time at Auschwitz, there were lengthy passages that seemed almost like a book of obituaries, with a paragraph or two devoted to each death. I don’t think the author wrote about all 230 wo...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

How do you write a review on a book that contrasts the absolute cruelty and sadistic imaginations with friendship and altruism? It is very difficult, indeed.

I've read many books on WWII that describe the Jewish POV and soldier POV. This time the POV is that of female political prisoners of war. This point of view hit closer to home as I am neither Jewish nor a soldier. It begs the question, if placed in a situation where not in immediate danger, what side of the line would I stand?

The first part...more How do you write a review on a book that contrasts the absolute cruelty and sadistic imaginations with friendship and altruism? It is very difficult, indeed.

I've read many books on WWII that describe the Jewish POV and soldier POV. This time the POV is that of female political prisoners of war. This point of view hit closer to home as I am neither Jewish nor a soldier. It begs the question, if placed in a situation where not in immediate danger, what side of the line would I stand?

The first part of the book is a little difficult to slog through but important in establishing the extremes of the French people. When German tanks and troops rolled into Paris in neat little rows and friendly faces, the Parisians were wary but complacent. Under the current French government, the citizens were encouraged to cooperate. Shortly thereafter, the German agenda became apparent. The citizens suffered under their rule. While many stayed complacent, others organized themselves in a resistance. The printed, sabotaged, broke curfew, hid Jews, etc. at the high price of possibly losing everything. At the other end of the spectrum, the country also held men and women who collaborated with the Germans, particularly the French police, patiently watching suspected criminals then cracking down with the brutality to rival the German SS force.

We are introduced to many of the members of the resistance in the first half of the book. To me, it was still pretty muddled. In fact, I will go ahead and make the remark that the book is written like a school history book, including extraneous details that might offer insight but generally is too much information and not organized in a way my linear brain works. In fact, the overall writing style was a little muddled and unclear. As I was reading an advanced reader's copy with multiple typos, I can't really complain but the writing style was not one I was comfortable reading. At the same time, the subject matter is not one I would turn to for comfort. It is not easy reading but provided a different perspective that I wanted to understand.

The second half of the book is brutal. The prisoners are sent to the worst of the worst concentration camps. The begin in Auschwitz (Birkenau) then to Ravensbrook and eventually to Mathausen. In agonizing yet necessary detail, the brutalities are exposed, along with names of kapos and others that needed identification. Again, this is not a "feel good" book. It is horrifying and brutal considering that these acts were carried out by the same creatures as their victims. They are dehumanized in so many ways. And yet this horrific treatment is the catalyst for their durabond friendship. In the most hopeless of circumstances, the women cling to one another, watch each other's backs, hide each other when they are ill and then there is the occasional mention of humanity in the face of the German guards or an act of grace carried out by a hated kapo. In circumstances of war, starving hunger, plummeting temperatures, carnage and illness, it is the acts of kindness and camaraderie that make the difference between death and life.

Although part of the second section of the book, the author continues the stories of the survivors and the loneliness, emptiness and lack of depth they experience upon return. They all go their separate ways as they are reunited with family or begin a new life someplace else but they all distinctly feel the loss of the friendships that sustained them through their 19 months of horror.

What distinguishes this book from others is that the women are people who didn't have to take a stand to survive. The reader is also struck by the lengths many of the women are willing to take to help another survive. It is well worth reading. (less)

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Nov 27, 2012 Mary Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

The first 1/3 to 1/2 of this book is pretty unexceptional. That first section is a straightforward litany of French Resistance activity and introducing many of the women we are to follow by name, along with an accounting of how the Nazis expanded their control first over occupied France then over Vichy. It's nothing special, especially if you've done any reading on the topic before.

Where this book becomes remarkable is once all of our cast have been arrested and imprisoned together, where they...more

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A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France

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