A Train in Winter (48 page)

Then she went on: ‘The life we wanted to find again, when we used to say “if I return” was to have been large, majestic, full of colour. Isn’t it our fault that the life we resumed proved so tasteless, shabby, trivial, thieving, that our hopes were mutilated, our best intentions destroyed?’ Her husband, she said, was sensitive, thoughtful, and wanted her to forget, and she did not want to hurt his feelings. But all she could think was that to forget would be an act of betrayal. She thought of them all, of Viva and Danielle and Raymonde and Annette, all the time and for the most part she felt closer to those she went on thinking of as ‘real ones, our real comrades’. So she had decided not to talk any more about Auschwitz. ‘Looking at me, one would think that I’m alive… I’m not alive. I died in Auschwitz, but no one knows it.’

Appendix: the women

In 2008, when I started work on this book, there were seven women still alive from the
Convoi des 31000
. They were:

Simone Alizon
(Poupette). b. 24 February 1925 and the youngest of the survivors. Poupette married and had two daughters and was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
. She returned to live in Rennes.

Cécile Charua,
the
Cygne d’Enghien
. b. 18 July 1915. After the war, Cécile remarried and had two sons. She lives near them, in Brittany.

Madeleine Dissoubray.
b. 25 November 1917. Madeleine came back from Ravensbrück, married, had two children, and a career in education. She remained close to the Resistance organisations.

Madeleine Langlois
(Betty),
Ongles Rouges
. b. 23 May 1914. After the war, Betty married, had a son and went to live in Morocco. She spent the last years of her life in Paris, where she died in 2009.

Geneviève Pakula.
b. 22 December 1922. Originally Polish, Geneviève returned from the camps to France, married, had a daughter and became a dressmaker. She was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
.

Gilberte Tamisé.
b. 3 February 1912. Gilberte’s younger sister, Andrée, died in Auschwitz. Gilberte came back to Bordeaux and looked after her father. She died in 2009.

Lulu Thévenin.
b. 16 July 1917 in Marseilles. She and her sister
Carmen
both came home—the only pair of sisters to do so. Lulu found her husband and her son Paul waiting and returned to her work with the Communist Party. She died in 2009.

There was not always very much that I was able to find out about the other
42 women
from the
Convoi
who survived the war, but who died in the years that followed. They returned to families that had been broken up, houses that had been bombed or ransacked, children who no longer knew them. Many had husbands and lovers who had been shot by the Germans. Some married again. Some of the single women married and had children. Nearly all suffered from continuing bad health—arthritis, heart problems, skin disorders, the lingering effects of typhus. They got tired quickly and had bouts of depression. Few, very few, found the life of happiness they had dreamt about.

Marie-Jeanne Bauer.
b. 14 July 1913 in Saint-Affrique, remained in Auschwitz until liberation. Returned to find her house bombed, her husband and brother executed. In the camps she had lost the sight of one eye.

Antoinette Besseyre.
b. 7 July 1919 in Brittany. Antoinette’s communist husband had been shot by the Germans. She remarried but felt too ill, with recurrent symptoms of typhus, to have children.

Félicienne Bierge.
b. 9 June 1914 in Spain but grew up in Bordeaux. Félicienne’s husband had been shot by the Germans, but she returned to her son, remarried, and had one daughter.

Claudine Blateau.
b. 23 March 1911 in Niort. Claudine returned to find that her husband had been shot by the Germans, but her two children were waiting for her. She remarried.

Hélène Bolleau.
b. 6 April 1924 in Royan. Hélène’s mother Emma had died in Auschwitz and her father had been shot by the Germans. She returned, at the age of 21, married and had children. But her health was always poor and she suffered from depression.

Marie-Louise Colombain.
b. 12 April 1920 in Paris. Marie-Louise came home to learn that her husband had died in Mauthausen. She remarried, and had three children.

Marguerite Corringer.
b. 15 June 1902 in Paris. Marguerite had been a lady’s maid and housekeeper before the war. Her husband, a communist, was shot by the Germans. She returned ill, with arthritis and osteoporosis.

Madeleine Dechavassine.
b. 1900 in the Ardennes. Madeleine returned to her work as a chemical engineer but never married. She retired in 1960 and lived alone.

Alida Delasalle.
b. 23 July 1907 in Fécamp. Alida’s health was destroyed in the camps. She returned with pericarditis, nephritis, sclerosis and rheumatism, and she had lost her teeth and part of her hearing. She was not well enough to work again. Her husband had been shot by the Germans.

Charlotte Delbo.
b. 10 August 1913 in Seine-et-Oise. Returned to a job in Geneva with the UN and to write poetry, plays and memoirs of the camps. Her husband had been shot by the Germans and she did not remarry.

Madeleine Doiret
(Mado). b. 2 November 1920 in Ivry. Mado was only 24 when she returned. She married and had one son. She went back to work as a secretary, but was forced to retire early because of spinal problems. She remained haunted by those who did not survive.

Aimée Doridat.
b. 14 March 1905 in Nancy. Aimée was deported with her sister-in-law Olga Godefroy, who did not return. Aimée’s leg was amputated in Birkenau. When she returned home she found her husband and children waiting for her, and was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
.

Germaine Drapon.
b. 1 January 1903 in Charente. Took in wanted communists. Returned to find husband, freed from Oranienburg, and her daughter. Their house had been bombed, but they were together.

Marie-Jeanne Dupont
. b. 11 March 1921 in Douai. Aged 24 when she returned, Marie-Jeanne married and had two children, but her health was constantly bad.

Mitzy Ferry.
b. 6 March 1918 in the Vosges. Mitzy returned to settle in the Midi and bring up her son. But her health was always poor and she had many abdominal operations.

Hélène Fournier
. b. 23 December 1904 in Indre-et-Loire. The only survivor from the Tours region, Hélène returned to find her husband and daughter. She was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
.

Yolande Gili.
b. 7 March 1922 in the Moselle where her Italian immigrant parents had settled. Her father and husband had both been shot by the Germans, and her sister Aurore Pica did not return from the camps, but Yolande came back to her son, and remarried. Her health was extremely poor.

Adelaïde Hautval.
b. 1 January 1906 in the Rhine basin. One of the last women to be repatriated, she returned to become a school doctor. She was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
for her devotion to her comrades in the camps.

Thérèse Lamboy.
b. 25 July 1918. Details of her life unknown, beyond the fact that she had one child; and that she survived.

Fernande Laurent.
b. 31 December 1902 in Nantes. Fernande returned to file a complaint against the family who had denounced her. She found her husband and children waiting for her but her health was extremely bad; she suffered from heart trouble, bronchitis and phlebitis.

Marcelle Lemasson.
b. 28 November 1909 in Saintes. Reunited with her husband, who had survived Mauthausen, she had one son, but suffered from back problems and a bad heart.

Simone Loche.
b. 27 October 1913 in Loire-Inférieure. She returned to her husband and small son, and was slowly nursed back to health.

Louise Losserand.
b. 23 February 1904 in Paris. Louise’s husband had been shot by the Germans. Although she remarried, she was never able to resume her work as a furrier.

Louise Magadur.
b. 21 April 1899 in Finistère. The eldest of the survivors to return, Louise reopened her beauty parlour. But the dog bites to her legs never healed properly, and she had terrible nightmares.

Lucie Mansuy.
b. 3 June 1915 in the Vosges. Lucie’s husband had died in the Spanish Civil War, and her lover was killed by the Germans. She returned to find that her house had been stripped. She became a machine cutter, but suffered from terrible nightmares.

Henriette Mauvais.
b. 22 October 1906 in Vitry-sur-Seine. Henriette returned to her husband and two daughters and went on to have twins. She worked as a shorthand typist.

Marthe Meynard.
b. 29 March 1912 in Angoulême. Marthe’s husband died in Mauthausen. Her only son, who was three when his parents were deported, committed suicide in 1973, leaving four children.

Lucienne Michaud.
b. 4 April 1923 in Creusot. Louise married her fiancé from before the war, had two children, and took a job in a travel agency.

Marcelle Mourot.
b. 31 July 1918 in Doubs. After the war Marcelle married another resister and had two children. She underwent numerous ear operations.

Marie-Elisa Nordmann.
b. 4 November 1910 in Paris. Marie-Elisa, whose mother had died in Birkenau, returned to her son and her scientific career. She remarried and had three more children. She was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
.

Marie-Jeanne Pennec.
b. 9 July 1909 in Rennes. Marie-Jeanne returned to her son, but had constant troubles with him, and when he moved to Indochina she suffered a nervous depression, tried to commit suicide and had a lobotomy.

Germaine Pican.
b. 10 October 1901 in Rouen. Germaine’s husband André had been shot by the Germans but she returned to her two daughters. She remained a member of the Communist Party. The elder of the two girls, affected by the war and the loss of her father, died two years later.

Germaine Pirou.
b. 9 March 1918 in Finistère. In 1956, Germaine married an Austrian who had joined the Foreign Legion. They had one son, and took a job managing an estate. She was one of the very few survivors to live a happy life.

Renée Pitiot.
b. 17 November 1921 in Paris. Renée’s husband had been shot by the Germans at the age of 22. She remarried and had three daughters, but died young of kidney failure.

Paulette Prunières.
b. 13 November 1918 in Paris. Paulette married and had two children but she was frequently ill.

Germaine Renaudin.
b. 22 March 1906 in Meurthe-et-Moselle. A Catholic and a communist, Germaine returned to her husband, son and two daughters and had two more children. She died of cancer in 1968.

Simone Sampaix.
b. 14 June 1924 in Sedan. Simone was 20 when she returned. She married twice and had one son, but her health never recovered.

Jeanne Serre (Carmen).
b. July 1919, in Algeria. Carmen married and had three children. She suffered from ill health but remained a militant communist.

Julia Slusarczyk.
b. 26 April 1902 in Poland. Julia never knew why she had been arrested. She returned to Paris to find her pork butcher business destroyed and her companion very ill. Her own health never recovered.

Hélène Solomon.
b. 25 May 1909 in Paris. Hélène’s husband Jacques was shot by the Germans. She returned to become a Deputy in the French parliament, and to work in scientific research. She remarried, but had no children and her health was always poor.

Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier.
b. 3 November 1912 in Paris. Widowed before the war, Marie-Claude returned to remarry her companion, Pierre Villon. She became a Communist Deputy and had a distinguished career. She was awarded the
Légion d’honneur
.

Rolande Vandaële.
b. 18 April 1918 in Paris. Rolande was deported with her mother Charlotte Douillot and aunt Henriette L’Huillier, neither of whom returned. After the war she was reunited with her postman husband and had one son. But she remained fearful and haunted.

And the women who did not come home:

Jeanne Alexandre.
Cantal. Transported weapons for the Resistance. She was 31 when she died of typhus in February 1943. Left one son.