THE SISTERHOOD OF RAVENSBRÜCK

Agents of the French Resistance find life-lasting, soul-saving, history-changing friendships in an all-female concentration camp.

Germaine Tillion, Anise Girard, Geneviève de Gaulle, Jacqueline d’Alincourt, and scores of their friends and collaborators were arrested and imprisoned in the early 1940s for participating in underground resistance efforts following the Vichy government’s surrender to Nazi Germany. Rounding out a trilogy of sorts (including the bestseller Madame Fourcade’s Secret War) about oft-overlooked French heroines of World War II, Olson follows each of her four primary subjects from backgrounds etched with both privilege and patriarchy into resistance operations and then to the dehumanizing barracks of Ravensbrück. Olson chronicles their months clinging precariously to life in wretched conditions with graphic, sometimes sickening, detail, with intensifying stories of day-to-day horrors and descriptions of particular acts of brutality perpetrated by guards and medical staff. But beyond documenting such cruelty, Olson offers a deeper, even uplifting, story about the power of the female prisoners’ bond, not just to abet their survival but to preserve and strengthen their commitment to justice. As the war drew to a close and SS administrators became more desperate, the tightknit group of defiant and determined women resisted work, led “audacious” operations to protect the most vulnerable among them, recorded the atrocities they witnessed, and even created art. These activities laid the groundwork for the efforts they spearheaded upon their liberation and repatriation. Despite the lack of a hero’s welcome, the former prisoners sought justice for their captors and medical care and compensation for themselves and their fellow inmates. The author’s portrayal of the women’s postwar work, relationships, and notoriety inspires even greater awe at their widespread, ongoing positive impact.

Both devastating and galvanizing, an account of how the best of humanity can rise to oppose the very worst.