Abstract
In an extensive synthesis of this first comparative study of its kind, concluding remarks in this chapter illustrate how Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion were committed to numerous forms of resistance as soon as they learned of the enemy incursion into Western Europe. This chapter offers insights into each writer’s personal engagements in resistance activities in order to measure the historical, literary, and autobiographical significance of her works from a fresh perspective. It also offers suggestions for potential future studies of women writers who resisted enemy oppression during World War II and the Holocaust.
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Notes
- 1.
Noor was imprisoned at a facility on the Avenue Foch for over a month, and then in Pforzheim. She was the first political prisoner at Pforzheim to be categorized as Nacht und Nebel before being transferred Dachau , where she was executed. For more information on Noor’s imprisonment, see Basu , Spy Princess , 167–180.
- 2.
Contributors to this panel discussion were Robert Allison, James Carroll, Margaret Collins Weitz , and Susan Rubin Suleiman. “Women in Occupied France,” March 19, 2015, Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.
- 3.
Margaret Collins Weitz , Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940–1945 (New York, NY: Wiley, 1995), 8–11.
- 4.
Ibid., 10.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid., 8–11. Weitz notes that historian Henri Michel defines resistance as any violation “in acting or in writing” against the armistice between France and Germany signed on June 22, 1940. See Henri Michel’s Bibliographie critique de la Résistance (Paris: Institut Pédagogique National, 1964), 9.
- 7.
The various phases of this trend have been widely discussed by historiographers, often under the rubric of histoire événementielle. For a chronological overview and penetrating critique, see Paul Ricoeur, “Le retour de l’événement,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Italie et Méditérrannée 104 (1992): 29–35, http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/mefr_1123-9891_1992_num_104_1_4195 (accessed November 14, 2018).
- 8.
Sarah Helm , If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbrück, Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women (London: Little, Brown, 2015), 64. The title of course echoes Primo Levi’s Holocaust memoir Se questo è un uomo [If This Is a Man] (Torino, Italy: F. DeSilva, 1947). Elsewhere Helm has written about Vera Atkins , who assisted the leader of the French section of the SOE Maurice Buckmaster and was involved with recruiting Noor for the SOE. See also Helm’s Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2014) and A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII (New York: Random House, 2008).
- 9.
One of the earliest manifestations of this tendency was the creation in 1929 of Annales, a journal founded by French historians Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. Its receptiveness to a wide assortment of new methodologies adapted to a much broader cross section of cultures and societies gave rise to the so-called “Annales School” that flourished through several generations of historians and found exemplars in many other nations. It was an inspirational factor in the awakening of interest during the 1990s in research on gendered and culturally diverse issues. For a useful history of the Annales school, see Philippe Carrard, Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
- 10.
For one of the first articles on women and the Holocaust , see Joan Ringelheim, “Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10, no. 4 (Summer 1985): 741–761.
- 11.
Helm , If This Is a Woman, 64.
- 12.
Rosette C. Lamont . “The Triple Courage of Charlotte Delbo: A Place Without a Name,” The Massachusetts Review 41, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 483–497.
- 13.
Douglas Martin. “Germaine Tillion, French Anthropologist and Resistance Figure, Dies at 100,” The New York Times Editorial, April 25, 2008.
- 14.
Dalia Ofer , “The Contribution of Gender to the Study of the Holocaust,” in Gender and Jewish History, eds. Marion A. Kaplan and Deborah Dash Moore (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 120–138.
- 15.
Pascale Rachel Bos, “Women and the Holocaust: Analyzing Gender Difference,” in The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings, eds. Neil Levi and Michael Rothberg (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 178–186.
- 16.
Marianne Hirsch , The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), Introduction and 23.
- 17.
Alice Kaplan , Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 4. Kaplan has also authored books that touch on World War II, notably Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), which investigates fascist ideology in prewar and occupied France.
- 18.
Natalie Zemon Davis , Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 201–216. Davis has authored numerous case studies of marginal figures in early modern culture, including The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) and Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987). For many years while at Princeton she chaired the Shelby Cullom Davis Center, which is noted for providing a forum for scholarship that reflects the heritage of the Annales School.
- 19.
For another useful history of the Annales School, see the recently updated second edition of Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929–2014 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015).
- 20.
A third tripartite study of somewhat earlier vintage also comes to mind here: Neal Oxenhandler, Looking for Heroes in Postwar France: Albert Camus, Max Jacob, Simone Weil (Hanover, NH; Dartmouth College: University Press of New England, 1996).
- 21.
An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake, ed. Judy Barrett Litoff (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006).
- 22.
Hélène Berr , Hélène Berr Journal, 1942–1944 (Paris: Tallandier, 2008) and The Journal of Hélène Berr, trans. David Bellos (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008).
- 23.
Irène Némirovsky , Suite Française (Paris: Denoël, 2004); Suite Française, trans. Sandra Smith (London: Chatto & Windus, 2004; New York: Knopf, 2006). Some of her other fictional narratives were not published until 2005. See La vie d’ Irène Némirovsky, eds. Olivier Philipponant and Patrick Lienhardt (Paris: Denoël, 2007). See also Susan Rubin Suleiman, The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).
- 24.
Catherine Portuges explains that the film is a “portrayal of what became a cinematic iconography of the experience of Nazi persecution, thereby laying the groundwork for a new filmic genre that has since become ubiquitous: the docudrama.” See Portuges, “Intergenerational Memory: Transmitting the Past in Hungarian Cinema,” Quo Vadis European Cinema? Spectator 23, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 44–52.
- 25.
See Laura Conning, “The Rhythm of Death: How Diegetic Music Is Used in ‘The Last Stage’,” https://www.academia.edu/4700124/The_Rhythm_of_Death_How_Diegetic_Music_is_Used_in_The_Last_Stage (accessed November 2, 2018). See also Jean-Michel Frodon, ed., Le Cinéma et la Shoah: Un art à l’épreuve de la tragédie du 20e siècle (Paris, France: Éditions Cahiers du Cinema, 2007).
- 26.
Gisella Perl , I Was a Doctor at Auschwitz (New York: International Universities Press, 1948; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1979). See also Anne S. Reamey, “Gisella Perl: Angel and Abortionist in Auschwitz Death Camp,” http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/gisella-perl/ (accessed November 2, 2018).
- 27.
See Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story, DVD, Dir. Robert Gardner (2014). This film had its premier screening at the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014.
- 28.
See Ruth Franklin, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Although this study is not particularly focused on women’s writings, it provides significant observations about representations of the Holocaust in literature. In the introduction, Franklin discusses the interest of analyzing the Holocaust in fiction that does not rely exclusively on historians’ observations.
References
Albert-Lake, Virginia d’. An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake, edited by Judy Barrett Litoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Basu, Shrabani. Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications, 2007.
Berr, Hélène. Journal 1942–1944. Preface by Patrick Modiano. Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2006.
———. The Journal of Hélène Berr. Translated by David Bellos. New York: Weinstein Books, 2008.
Bos, Pascale Rachel. “Women and the Holocaust: Analyzing Gender Difference.” In The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings, edited by Neil Levi and Michael Rothberg, 178–186. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
Carrard, Philippe. Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story. DVD. Dir. Robert Gardner, 2014.
Frodon, Jean-Michel, ed. Le Cinéma et la Shoah: Un art à l’épreuve de la tragédie du 20e siècle. Paris: Éditions Cahiers du cinéma, 2007.
Helm, Sarah. A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII. New York: Random House, 2008.
———. Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2014.
———. If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbrück, Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women. London: Little, Brown, 2015.
Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Kaplan, Alice. Dreaming in French: the Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Lamont, Rosette C. “The Triple Courage of Charlotte Delbo.” The Massachusetts Review 41 (2000): 1–8.
Martin, Douglas. “Germaine Tillion, French Anthropologist and Resistance Figure Dies at 100.” New York Times Editorial, April 25, 2008. https://tinyurl.com/y4ekp5zj. Accessed June 21, 2019.
Michel, Henri. Bibliographie Critique de la Résistance. Paris: Institut Pédagogique National, 1964.
Némirovsky, Irène. Suite Française. Paris: Denoël, 2004.
———. Suite Française. Translated by Sandra Smith. London: Chatto & Windus, 2004; New York: Knopf, 2006.
Ofer, Dalia. “The Contribution of Gender to the Study of the Holocaust.” In Gender and Jewish History, edited by Deborah Dash Moore and Marion A. Kaplan, 120–135. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.
Perl, Gisella. I Was a Doctor at Auschwitz. New York: International Universities Press, 1948. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1979.
Portuges, Catherine. “Intergenerational Memory: Transmitting the Past in Hungarian Cinema.” Quo Vadis European Cinema? Spectator 23 (2003): 44–52.
Ricoeur, Paul. “Le retour de l’événement,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Italie et Méditérrannée 104 (1992): 29–35.
Ringelheim, Joan. “Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10, no. 4 (Summer 1985): 741–761.
Weitz, Margaret Collins. Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940–1945. New York, NY: Wiley, 1995.
Works Consulted
Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School: 1929–2014. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
———. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.
Franklin, Ruth. A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction. Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Kaplan, Alice. Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Oxenhandler, Neal. Looking for Heroes in Postwar France: Albert Camus, Max Jacob, Simone Weil. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College; University Press of New England, 1996.
Philipponant, Olivier, and Patrick Lienhardt, eds. La vie d’ Irène Némirovsky. Paris: Denoël, 2007.
Suleiman, Susan Rubin. The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.
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Curtis, L.R. (2019). Conclusion: Women’s Reflections on Wartime Experiences. In: Writing Resistance and the Question of Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31242-8_5
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