The study of history is a conversation that the present has with the past. History professors and hardcore historical hobbyists are probably saying, “Well, duh.” But it’s taken me a long time to understand how the present affects the past. The Nine by Gwen Strauss helped me view this conversation in a new way. Strauss wrote a book to better understand part of her aunt’s life, and through this, an important history gets preserved. The Nine tells the story of women escaping the Nazi labor camps in the final days of World War Two, but it goes beyond their journey back to France to tell us who they were. The Nine also documents these women’s contributions to the war effort.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided an ARC of this book through Bookish First in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine and mine alone.
© Primmlife 2021
TL;DR
The Nine by Gwen Strauss tells the horrifying experiences of imprisoned Resistance fighters and their wartime escape. Through the lives of these women, Strauss describes the inhumanity of Nazi Germany. Highly recommended to history lovers.
From the Publisher
The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris.
The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at Ravensbrück. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape.
Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative from Gwen Strauss is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
Review: The Nine by Gwen Strauss
The Nine by Gwen Strauss tells the story of Hélène Podliasky, Strauss’s aunt, and the women she led from Nazi labor camps through a Germany anticipating an imminent loss through the front lines and into history. In addition to Hélène, Suzanne Maudet (Zaza), Nicole Clarence, Madelon Verstijnen (Lon), Guillemette Daendels (Guigui), Renée Lebon Châtenay (Zinka), Joséphine Bordanava (Josée), Jacqueline Aubéry du Boulley (Jacky), and Yvonne Le Guillou (Mena) survived the camps at Leipzig, where they worked in the HASAG factory. After a bombing by the Allies, the Nazis sent the prisoners working at HASAG on a death march to nowhere. The nine women seize their moment and escape. But they escape into hostile territory where any encounter could result in their capture. The Nine takes place as the Allies push into Germany; so, the citizens that the nine meet are all in various stages of dealing with the impending loss. On their journey, the nine will risk everything to return to France.
Strauss documents the women’s escape route to the Allied front. She also mixes in biographical information, such as what roles the women had in the Resistance in France, family, lives prior to the war, etc. Strauss also documents her efforts in contacting the families of the women to learn directly from the women if possible, from their family’s oral history if not. While this was a small, small part of the book, I appreciated it.
Lost Lives
While the main focus of the book is on the nine women and their escape. Strauss also takes time to tell small stories about other women in the book; her highlighting of the lost hit home for me. Strauss discusses how the Germans moved people around, destroyed records, and even destroyed babies. How many people were lost that we don’t even know about? I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to answer that question.
Like any book about the Holocaust or the camps of World War Two, sections were difficult to read. The descriptions of what the Nazis did with babies born in the camps sickened me. They were hard to read, and it’s hard for me – safe in the U.S. – to believe that humans are capable of such horrors. While the descriptions are disturbing, they’re treated respectfully and necessary to the narrative. It doesn’t feel like indulging in horror for horrors-sake. Reminders like this are necessary to hopefully prevent these atrocities from happening again.
Women in War
Reading about the lives of these women, we see a contrast between their roles prior to and during the war. World War Two changed a lot, but it also shifted the role of women in society. We know about Rosie the Riveter, but it’s also – or, maybe, more – important to know about the women of the Resistance. Strauss discusses her aunt being put in charge of men in the Resistance, noting that it went against the contemporary social order. Hélène worried that the men wouldn’t listen to a girl, but in times of war, all social structures break down. Survival is all that matters, and men will obey women to support the war effort. And by necessity women will be given leadership roles. War doesn’t care about gender or biological sex. But, for whatever reason, this is a lesson U.S. society needs to be reminded of time and time again.
It was also interesting to see the women use society’s perceptions to facilitate their escape. Hélène plays the “we’re just women; we don’t know anything about war; please, help us” act a few times. Even though the Nazi military relied on the women for manufacturing weapons, the Germans still couldn’t see the women as anything but helpless. The women survived because men were unable to see past the women’s sex.
These historical contrasts are interesting to read in light of the current culture. Women are part of our modern military, and some have achieved leadership positions, such as Admiral Grace Hopper. It’s odd to see how women fighting in the resistance was considered ground-breaking. I was reminded of Kameron Hurley’s essay, We Have Always Fought, because, of course, women were part of the Resistance. The norms of today will eventually change just as the norms of yesterday have.
The Capacity to Survive
The prisoners in the Nazi war camps endured horrific, unsanitary, inhumane conditions. The Nine looks at how these women survived. They used different strategies, but, primarily, they relied on and supported each other. They formed a family to care for one another. Had the women possessed the “every woman for herself” philosophy, it seems safe to say they wouldn’t have made it. The shared bonds of humanity reminded them that they were people, not just slaves. Strauss relates how the women shared cooking recipes to help them through their experiences, and even bonded with other prisoners to trade recipes. The image of starving prisoners listening to someone describe a recipe will stay with me always.
The Asozial Prisoners
Strauss has a few pages on the asozial prisoners of the camps. These prisoners included Sinti, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lesbians, sex workers, and criminals. Interestingly, this group seemed forgotten by history until February 2020. Strauss says they didn’t join survivor groups or have any political organizations advocating for their rights after the war. They were seemingly buried in history. Reminding the world that these women existed is important and another reminder of how many lives we’ll never learn about. This is why history is not a settled matter as some believe. Re-examining the past to find those left out is a noble endeavor. As our society changes, these people, who were once ignored or shunned, are looked at in a new light, and their stories are finally recognized as just as important as others.
I appreciate that Strauss took time in this book to expand the spotlight in small ways beyond the main focus of the novel. In this way, she’s made The Nine about the labor camps themselves. Strauss balances the additional information well so that the focus doesn’t drift. The book uses the additional information to highlight the women’s setting and what they went through.
Conclusion
Gwen Strauss’s The Nine brings forward the daring escape of starved women from a Nazi labor camp. The capacity for these women to hope contrasts with the horrors that humans have inflicted upon them. The author started out to learn more about her aunt, and in the end, she gave us this reminder that there are always more stories to be told by the study of history.
The Nine by Gwen Strauss is available from St. Martin’s Press on May 4th, 2021.
© Primmlife.com 2021