Wielka i mała historia utrwalona w inskrypcjach nagrobnych pogranicza polsko-ukraińskiego

Servigliano is located about 82 kilometers (51 miles) east of Perugia. The concentration camp in the town began during World War I as a prisoner of war (POW) camp to contain Austro-Hungarian and Turkish prisoners. The structure took up 3.5 hectares (6 acres) of space, surrounded by a 3-meter-high (9.8-feet-high) stone wall and divided into two sections. Inside the wall there were 32 wooden barracks that could hold, in total, 4,000 persons. Outside the wall were offices and living quarters for the camp administrators and the guards. After it was renovated at the end of 1940, the camp officially reopened as a POW camp in January 1941. Greek, British, American, and French prisoners were held there until 1943. After the signing of the Armistice of September 8, 1943, the prisoners escaped, fearing they would be taken into German custody. Indeed the Germans appeared in the first days of October, occupying the camp and confiscating much of the remaining supplies. On October 5, 1943, the Ge...

After the war, German concentration and POW camps were transformed into temporary camps for captured soldiers and ‘displaced persons’ (DPs), followed by millions of German refugees and expellees from eastern Europe. Camps were also used to intern 400,000 Nazi suspects, only a small minority of whom were put on trial. Across Soviet-occupied eastern Europe, the NKVD and the local secret police set up camps for political suspects on the Gulag model. Conditions in the lethal ‘special camps’ in the Soviet zone of Germany made them analogous to the worst concentration camps. Imperial democracies continued to use camps and ‘new villages’ in decolonization warfare. It is argued that these were not ‘Auschwitz in Algeria’ or ‘Britain’s Gulag’, but the instruments of updated counter-insurgency, characterized by authoritarian modernization and violent repression. Concentration camps in the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s were used for ‘ethnic cleansing’; for the first time, they prompted ‘humanitarian intervention’. Communist China’s camp system emulated the Soviet model, replete with ‘transformation through labour’ (laogai) and internal colonialism on the periphery (Xinjiang, Tibet). Millions were interned in the 1950s in a vast system of forced labour; in the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (1966–71) millions more were incarcerated. Countless thousands are still held in China’s concentration camps, now labelled ‘training camps’ or ‘education centres’. Their extent overshadows anything else in world history, with perhaps 60 million incarcerated since 1949. The chapter ends by discussing whether Guantanamo and other American ‘detention facilities’ are concentration camps.

This chapter demonstrates that there were large areas of contiguity between POW and concentration camps. Captured soldiers, who in theory enjoyed rights under international law, were frequently transferred to the extra-legal sphere of forced labour, concentration, and death camps. Conditions in POW camps ranged from reasonably good for soldiers from western nations to murderous treatment of Soviet POWs. The Polish POWs were demobilized and used as forced labourers. Spanish Republican soldiers captured in France were sent to concentration camps, where their mortality was higher than for any other nationality. Italian military internees faced vindictiveness for their alleged treachery, and were treated little better than east European forced labourers. Soviet POWs suffered deliberate neglect and mass killing on a vast scale; alleged Bolshevik commissars and Jews were liquidated. It is argued that this unprecedented killing of captives cannot be reduced to a policy of planned extermination, but arose from a complex of ruthless Wehrmacht directives, Nazi racial policy, and the expectation of imminent victory. In addition, thousands of Soviet POWs were sent to concentration and death camps. When policies were gradually changed in winter 1941–2, to keep Soviet prisoners alive and exploit their labour, most survived. The cruel treatment and mass death of Soviet POWs outside concentration camps points to the problem of adhering to definitions created by the SS.

This article is in part motivated by the lack of knowledge and understanding of the Umbilo POW Camp, deficiencies it will attempt to address by presenting a concise institutional biography of the establishment. It was also motivated by the fact that the institutional culture of the Umbilo Camp was atypical of all the other Boer POW camps, and dissimilar, too, from POW camps of more contemporary conflicts. Furthermore, the Umbilo Camp formed part of an extensive camp system created in and around Durban during the Anglo-Boer War. Approximately 25,000 Boer civilians were incarcerated in concentration camps at Merebank, Wentworth, Jacobs and Pinetown, while refugees, especially from the Transvaal, were housed in camps at Lord’s Ground and Victoria Park.10 While the concentration camps are underpinned by a rich and diverse historiography,11 this is not the case with POW camps, which are completely overshadowed by what has been written about the former.

More than 1.2 million Italian military men were incarcerated during World War II, about half taken by the Allies as prisoners of war (POWs). Among the more than five hundred thousand POWs total in US custody were just over fifty-one thousand Italians who were held in POW camps in the United States. Italian POWs began arriving in the United States in December 1942, and by the early fall of 1943, they were scattered across more than twenty camps. After Italy surrendered in September 1943, Italian combatants already classified as POWs and in Allied hands were, in most cases, given the opportunity to collaborate with the Allies; collaboration generally meant more liberties while still retaining the POW classification. By the spring of 1944, more than thirty-two thousand men had become collaborators in the United States, while the remaining were classified as non-collaborators. The two groups were separated into camps across the country: non-collaborators in high-security camps, and collaborators in lower-security camps organized as Italian Service Units or ISUs.This book tells the story of one of the high-security camps, Camp Hereford, located about fifty miles southwest of Amarillo, Texas. It focuses on the period from the spring of 1944, when the camp filled with non-collaborating POWs (the majority of them officers), until the prisoners’ repatriation, mostly in 1946. Conti also covers the years leading up to 1944 as well as the period after the war, documenting some reunion efforts among former prisoners. Hereford, by far the most famous of the non-collaborator camps, owes its fame, Conti suggests, not only to its size (at its peak it housed more than five thousand POWs) but also to the fact that it held leading figures in postwar Italian arts and letters—including university professors, lawyers, journalists, and artists.While Conti references Japanese and German POWs held by the United States, he does not offer a comparison with those groups, nor with the German Americans or Italian Americans who might have been arrested, detained, or incarcerated, let alone the more wide-sweeping and longer-lasting Japanese American incarceration. He instead focuses on Hereford in relation to the other places in the United States where Italian soldiers were imprisoned. He also does not compare experiences of soldiers held at Hereford with those of Italian POWs held elsewhere, outside the United States, nor of Italian Military Internees (Italian soldiers found in German-occupied areas after Italy's surrender).Conti's book is a tour de force, divided into twenty-five chapters, plus an introduction, conclusion, and a preface by Enzo Orlanducci, president of the Associazione Nazionale Reduci dalla Prigionia, or National Association of Prison Veterans. Included is a thick appendix with a list of all Italian officers and American military personnel at Camp Hereford and a selection of primary source material, including transcribed letters and postcards of one POW, Giuseppe Berto. A lengthy gallery of photographs and other images illuminates different aspects of the POW experience, including objects the POWs made and photographs from the postwar era.This book is indeed comprehensive, with parts devoted to various leisure activities (from playing sports to the development of a small zoo), prisoner health and medical care, religious practices, failed escape attempts, communication with Italy and censorship, a chapel built by POWs at the camp cemetery, and the seven deaths in the camp (none of them the result of maltreatment and one the brutal knifing of Pierluigi Berticelli by another Italian prisoner). Throughout, Conti covers the range of POW life, from quotidian experiences to extraordinary events, and demonstrates that for many prisoners even the most mundane aspects of the POW experience were life-changing.Camp Hereford has often been referred to as the “Fascist Camp,” a nickname Conti asks his readers to reconsider. He reminds us that there were multiple reasons why POWs might have chosen not to collaborate or were otherwise sent to Hereford. He finds that while some were committed Fascists, others were judged as such by US officials: Prisoners, even those deemed collaborators, were sometimes sent to Hereford for being politically suspect or disruptive. Conti also notes that since neither General Pietro Badoglio, who was central to Italy's surrender, nor any other post-armistice Italian official ever directly ordered Italian soldiers to collaborate, many prisoners felt that collaboration went against what they had committed to and might even have been considered treasonous.Conti also points to the intellectual life of the camp to demonstrate its ideological diversity. The camp library of 1,500 books favored works that were pro-democracy and pro-US. Most were in English, but some Italian-language books and newspapers also circulated. One of the permitted reading groups, studying works by Karl Marx, called its members collettivisti (collectivists) rather than communisti (communists). Conti also notes the existence of a reading group of “fascisti convinti” (committed Fascists), although it is less clear what that group was permitted to read.Conti devotes significant space to camp artists and to prisoners’ many creative expressions. In particular, he discusses the significance of Hereford on the development of Alberto Burri, who became a leading figure in the postwar arte povera movement. Burri arrived in Texas as a practicing physician and left as a visual artist. While at Hereford, he began experimenting with natural paints as well as unconventional canvases—both elements that would become part of his signature style of painting. Hereford had an exhibit of POW artists (the book reproduces the exhibit poster) but, as others have already documented, Burri did not display his paintings there. Conti suggests that Burri chose not to as he was not yet confident as a painter, although Burri did show some of his crafted work in the exhibit, including a carved wooden chess set.Conti also covers Hereford's many prisoner publications, among them one-time broadsides and regularly published newspapers. He suggests that Hereford must have been the most prolific of the camps to produce such publications since it contained many (presumably higher-educated) officers. And yet I cannot help but wonder what other factors might have led to this proliferation. For instance, because Hereford POWs, like all non-collaborators, were less likely to agree to perform daily work, they enjoyed more free time to devote to other forms of constructive creations.The book also covers, to some degree, how POWs saw the United States, especially in light of the mythical quality the nation held for many Italians. In this vein, Conti considers briefly the interaction of the POWs with Italian American military personnel, who often served as both formal language translators and informal cultural translators, suggesting the power of affinity even during the thick of hostilities.Importantly, Conti unpacks the often-referenced fact that just as the war in Europe was coming to an end, Hereford prisoners started to be less well treated, especially with respect to food rations. He documents how men went from being extremely comfortable and well fed (albeit with what many deemed strange food items, such as hot dogs and orange-colored cheese) to having their food rations radically cut in early 1945. Rationing started across all POW camps that year, presumably to save resources, but non-collaborating camps experienced more severe rationing. Apparently, as news spread about what Allied forces found in German concentration camps, rations at the non-collaborating camps became more pronounced. While never confirmed, this extra rationing appears to have been in retaliation for Italy's part in the evidence of genocide Americans confronted at concentration camps. Conti notes a drastic reduction in daily calories offered to POWs and documents the correspondence and oral testimonies of prisoners who tried to signal these changes to family on the outside. By the fall of 1945, inspectors from the Red Cross, the US Department of State, and the Italian Embassy found that the amount and quality of camp food was insufficient and that some men weighed less than when they had arrived. By December 1945, the situation had improved, with former POWs suggesting in retrospect that they felt Americans had decided to fatten them up before their repatriation.Conti has published numerous works in Italian on Italian POWs. In English, his Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania: Allies on the Home Front, 1944–1945 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2019), coauthored with Alan Perry, covers the ISU camp near Letterkenny, Pennsylvania. For Hereford, Conti relies heavily on archives, including those in Italy and the Vatican, as well as oral histories and interviews with former POWs. While at times burdened by encyclopedic coverage and many lists, this richly researched book is a much-needed deep dive into this still understudied aspect of Italian forced mobility in the twentieth century, more a primary source for scholars than a general work for students or casual readers. At the same time, Conti's observational style opens up the door to more questions than answers, especially about the ideological position of the prisoners during and after the war, the sociocultural context of their experiences, and how their time in Hereford influenced their communities both in postwar Italy and postwar United States.

The article offers an analysis of Underground, published by Canadian writer June Hutton in 2009. The main protagonist of the novel is a young Canadian, Albert Fraser, who suffers severe shock and disillusionment in the trenches of the First World War. He faces unemployment and destitution during the Great Depression and eventually joins the 1,700 Canadian volunteers who fought in the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War. My purpose is to analyse Hutton’s representation of the Canadian veterans’ difficult reintegration in the post-war years and the protagonist’s prise de conscience which ultimately leads him to Spain, despite his hatred of war. While discussing the veterans’ discontent and the Canadian government’s attempts to control this unruly population, I refer to Judith Butler’s conceptualization of precariousness and precarity, as well as Giorgio Agamben’s philosophical reflection on biopolitics and bare life. Central in my reading is the terrain of the camp — the hobo camp, the relief camp, and the POW camp — as a site of biopolitical exclusion, yet also a space of encounter that triggers ethical reflection. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the novel stages unexpected alliances between the protagonist and Chinese characters, which cause Fraser to revise his racist opinions. I propose the concept of multidirectional vulnerabilities to explore the parallels between these apparently disjointed geographies and temporalities. The article shows how Hutton represents the vulnerability of Canadian bodies in a historical period of socio-political upheavals, yet at the same time locates in their vulnerability the possibility of resistance and an alternative ethics.

A World of Camps Jonas Kreienbaum Bettina Greiner and Alan Kramer, eds., Die Welt der Lager: Zur “Erfolgsgeschichte” einer Institution (The World of the Camps: The “Success Story” of an Institution). 359 pp. Hamburg: Hamburger Editionen, 2013. ISBN-13 978-3868542677. €32.00. Internment camps are an essential part of modern history. From the first so-called “concentration camps” during the South African War (1899–1902) to present-day Guantánamo, they span the entire 20th century. They include, among many others, the prisoner-of-war (POW) camps in both world wars and the totalitarian camps in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and China. In consideration of its widespread use, Giorgio Agamben has recently dubbed the camp the “ ‘nomos’ of the modern,” while Zygmunt Bauman views the 20th century as the “century of camps.”1 Considering the omnipresence of camps, Bettina Greiner and Alan Kramer—the editors of the volume Die Welt der Lager under review here—provocatively speak of a “ ‘success story’ of an institution.”2 But, Kramer asks in his introduction, what made it so successful? Which factors contributed to the camp’s longevity and mutability (7)? These questions are the departure point of the collection, which evolved from a major international conference on camps held in Berlin in April 2011.3 [End Page 896] Three sets of subquestions dealing with (1) the origins of camps, (2) the term “camp” itself, and (3) the change in camps’ functions guide the 13 historical essays on “representative examples” (7) of camp systems. Most of the texts, all written by renowned camp specialists, focus on concentration camps, while others deal with POWs, civilian internment, and deportee camps to situate “the phenomenon in a broader context” (9). A section of 34 pictures of camps and internees, from a 1797 painting of the Norman Cross POW camp to a 2004 photo of Chinese prisoners, accompany the articles. In this review I will not discuss every single article but will instead focus on the three big themes—origins, terminology, and functional evolution— addressing only those texts that contribute most significantly to illuminating the problem in question. Looking for the origins of internment camps, both in general and in the case of particular camp systems, is highly important and actually a novelty in camp research. Even existing global histories on camps have asked few questions about processes of learning and information transfer, which may have helped spread the camp idea from one place to another.4 This blind spot in camp research—its neglect of transnational connections—may well have obscured one of the most compelling answers to the question of why internment camps have appeared so frequently in the 20th century: namely, because the camp concept was adopted based on international precedents. A transnational approach, focusing on processes of learning, is especially pronounced in the texts of Alan Kramer, Andreas Stucki, and Bettina Greiner. Kramer, in his overview, looks at different possible connections between colonial, World War I, and subsequent camp systems. For the Soviet camps he notes that the term “concentration camp” had been introduced into Russian during the South African War, while it was mainly the experiences with POW camps during the Great War that shaped the concentration camps of the Russian Civil War that followed (22). Stucki focuses on one particular case and asks whether the process of “reconcentration” on Cuba, whereby more than 400,000 civilians were resettled by Spanish troops during the War of Independence (1895–98), created a precedent that was subsequently followed by other imperial powers, starting with Britain in South Africa? Stucki reveals that it was mainly critics of the British camp policy in South Africa who linked it to the notorious Spanish role model in order to delegitimize it. Those decision makers who established the camps [End Page 897] in South Africa did not refer to Cuba, and it is therefore impossible directly to prove a process of learning, however likely it may seem in hindsight (82–86). Finally, Bettina Greiner highlights the importance of the “import of Soviet legal conceptions and practices” (297), which greatly influenced the way the so called “special camps” were run in the Soviet-occupied part of Germany between 1946...

The article describes the origins and development of the Palanga Lutheran congregation, from its formation at the beginning of the 19th century to its closure by the communist authorities in the early postwar years after the Second World War. The life of the affiliate in the parish of Rucava is discussed, as well as its attempts to build its own church in Palanga. The congregation’s life was particularly revitalised after the city was reunited with Lithuania in 1921. As an affiliate of the Kretinga parish, and supported by it and the Gustav-Adolf-Werk, it bought its own prayer house in 1928. The article describes ecclesiastical life in this period, the disastrous effects of the 1938 fire, when the congregation lost its place of worship, and the challenges it faced in the first years of the Soviet occupation.

6 worldliteraturetoday.org The Watchtower Elizabeth Harrower The Watchtower, first published in 1966, is a psychological novel of class and power set in Sydney in the 1940s. Laura, the elder sister, had ambitions to be a doctor like her father (or else a singer), but when her father is on his deathbed, she is removed from her boarding school and enrolled in a Sydney business school. She finds a job as a typist in a box factory and, in order to look after her younger sister, Clare, agrees to marry the forty-fouryear -old owner, Felix, who controls the women with a mixture of purse string–holding and hysteria. He is a study of alcoholic inadequacy and repressed homosexuality, a man who regards Laura and Clare as his servants . Laura becomes both afraid of Felix and complicit with him, trying to bring Clare into her orbit around him. Romulus My Father Raimond Gaita More than simply a memoir of childhood , Romulus My Father looks with the clarity of a child’s view at the sometimes difficult yet passionate world created by Gaita’s parents, disturbed and uprooted after the European war. In 1950 four-year-old Rai arrived in Australia from Germany with his mother, Christine, and his Romanian father, Romulus, a blacksmith who was to work on the construction of the Cairn Curran Reservoir near the tiny settlement at Baringhup, central Victoria. They settled in a weatherboard house, Frogmore, in the isolated landscape that Gaita fell in love with. Benang Kim Scott This novel is narrated by Harley, a man of Nyoonyar ancestry who is the outwardly successful outcome of his white grandfather’s attempts to put in practice the racial theories of the infamous A. O. Neville, who was western Australian chief protector of Aborigines in the 1930s and ’40s and, before that, chief of the Department for the North-West, Aborigines, and Fisheries. Neville argued that the “breeding out of color” by careful control of part-aboriginal people— where they lived, whom they married —would ultimately lead to the day where we could “forget there were Aborigines in Australia.” It’s a strong and moving novel, the stark and poetic story of the young man who has to carry his brutal but failing grandfather on his back, weighed down by history and family obligations taught to him by his aboriginal relatives. And when he puts his grandfather down on the ground, he begins to float away, weightless in his lack of sense of who he is—his very substance a light and floating thing. The Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan Heroism, goodness, mate-ship, war, enemies, class, memory, self-delusion , passion, guilt, honor, love, and loyalty—these are just some of the themes that bring to life a period in Australian history that has not been well expressed in novelistic form, although there have been noted war memoirs from survivors of the Japanese imperial army’s POW camps that were tasked to build the ThaiBurma railway. Set in pre–World War II Australia, then in the theaters of war of the Middle East and the Thai– Burma railway, and, afterward, the postwar years, the novel is the story of Dorrigo Evans: his years growing up in rural Tasmania, his time as a student surgeon, his engagement to the daughter of Melbourne toffs and the passionate affair that haunts him, his selfless service to other POWs in the Japanese camp, and his life as a celebrated hero in the ensuing years. Past and present sit together in this complex structure, as they do in our own minds, as Dorrigo ’s story unfolds in the presence of the Japanese haikus of Basho and the poetry of Paul Celan. Ramona Koval is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster. She is the editor of Best Australian Essays and was the presenter of ABC Radio National’s “The Book Show” for many years. She now interviews writers for The Monthly’s online book club. Her most recent book is By the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life. What to Read Now Australian Lit Ramona Koval notebook ...

This study explores the diachronic evolution of conceptual metaphors in the poetry of William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Stearns Eliot. Using a comparative method, quantitative frequency analysis, and qualitative examination of metaphorical features, it seeks to determine the transformation of metaphorical language from the Renaissance through Romanticism to Modernism. The works of the given authors were analyzed, and the metaphors were identified to accomplish the purpose. The frequency of use of metaphorical constructions, their typology, the use of metaphors in texts, as well as the comparison of the evolution of metaphorical language from the Renaissance (Shakespeare) through Romanticism (Wordsworth) to Modernism (Eliot), were considered. The study's methodological approach facilitates the expansion of corpus-based techniques to explore figurative language in literary texts. Its scientific importance is in its contribution to linguistics, literature, and history. The study’s outcomes give us an understanding of metaphor as both a linguistic device and a cognitive-cultural phenomenon. The practical value of this study is in its contribution to historical linguistics and language categories. This research offers a deeper understanding of how poetic metaphors have evolved in English literature throughout history, as well as demonstrating their role in creating cultural and cognitive models of world perception.

CHAPTER 22 - SECURE PROVISION FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

The article presents the results of research carried out within the framework of the project to develop methods of conservation and preservation of historical materials from Barrack No. 41 and the gas chamber bunker located on the grounds of the former concentration camp at Majdanek. The scope of the research included tests of moisture content, determination of the content of harmful building salts. The physical and mechanical characteristics of the historic bricks were also determined as part of the research. Complementary analytical techniques were used to characterize the mortar samples: X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS). The results presented in the article are the only such studies conducted on the site and represent a step in an ongoing comprehensive study describing the actual technical condition and degree of degradation of the materials. The primary goal is to preserve the barracks serving as a museum facility open to the public. The studies and research carried out as part of the project aim to preserve for future generations the memorial site of the German Nazi concentration and prisoner of war camp at Majdanek in Lublin – a place that witnessed the tragic events of World War II.

This article includes a terminological discussion regarding the notion of camp literature. Within Polish literary science, it is usually applied to literature raising the topic of German Nazi camps, particularly concentration camps and death camps, and, though less often, to Soviet camps, particularly forced labour camps. Yet the definition has proved to be excessively narrow. It should also cover, previously less studied, works of Polish literature regarding, i.a. the Polish concentration camp in Bereza Kartuska, the communist labour camps established in post-WWII Poland, and the Spanish concentration camp in Miranda de Ebro. The notion camp literature could also be applied to works devoted to internment camps, POW camps, or even ghettoes.

The paper discusses the cognitive mechanics of metaphorical name-giving with a focus on place names, following an overview of cognitive metaphor theory and the questions of metaphorically used proper nouns. In cognitive linguistics, the use of metaphors is a cognitive mechanism that plays a fundamental role in human thought and understanding, and the creation of our social, cultural and psychological reality. A particular form of this also manifests in name-giving, creating a small but influential category of names. The category of place names also influences the application of this name-giving method: it is generally used in more informal names and name types. The creation of such a name requires the speaker to detach themselves from the conventional norms of direct descriptionand metonymic name-giving, and relies on their lingual creativity and ability to detach themselves from dominant name-giving models. However, names in the category can also be divided into subcategories. Beyond the typical common-noun-based metaphorical name-giving, more complex parallels can also be found, resulting in the associations connecting the names of several nearby locations. Place names can also serve as the base of metaphorical name-giving, supporting the complex meaning of these names. Despite the fact that the majority of metaphorical names are available from contemporary data collection, it is obviously a long-standing and ancient method of name-giving, as it is based on a cognitive mechanics that seem to be as old as humanity itself.

Charlotte Delbo's Voice: The Conscious and Unconscious Determinants of a Woman Writer Nicole Thatcher Rentrer du camp rentrer dans le rang après l'histoire le tous les jours après le maquis le traintrain de la vie. [..·] Sortir de l'histoire pour entrer dans la vie essayez donc vous autres et vous verrez. (Mesure de nos jours, 82) THESE VERSES, WRITTEN AFTER Charlotte Delbo's return to France from Nazi concentration camps, encapsulate the considerable shift in the relationship of women with war brought by World War II. The total war character of this conflict gave women the opportunity to play an increasing role in the action: not only did they participate in the war effort through their work, but they also appeared as combatants, even in commanding positions in the case of the Soviet armed forces. Furthermore, as Billie Melman reminds us, with the German occupation of many countries, such as France in 1940, "the impact of the war on entire populations blurred the borderlines between 'front' and 'rear' in their gendered perspective,"1 allowing women, like men, to take an active part in the war in non-traditional ways, one being underground resistance. In this newly defined battlefield, women were able to make a personal decision to join the fight, with the accompanying risks of injury, arrest, imprisonment, torture and death. It was very consciously that Delbo chose to become involved in the French Communist resistance. Abandoning the South American tour of Louis Jouvet's theatrical company, in which she held the post of Jouvet's secretary, she rejoined her husband, Georges Dudach, in Paris, in November 1941. There, attached to the Communist underground resistance movement, they both worked at publishing clandestine material. Arrested by the French police in May 1942, and imprisoned in La Santé, they were transferred to the Gestapo. Dudach was executed in May 1942 and Delbo sent to Romainville prison, and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau, in January 1943, in a convoy of 230 women. Delbo's involvement in the French resistance and her 35 months of capVol . XL, No. 2 41 L'Esprit Créateur tivity may have been a short period in her lifetime (1913-1985), but they were a watershed which affected her to the end of her life. In this essay, I aim to analyse how her writings reflect her war experience and what singularises them as feminine, although Delbo declared that she was not a woman in her writing.21 will look firstly, and more particularly, at the representation of her specific experience in a Nazi extermination-concentration camp, and secondly at her view of war, with its accompanying concepts of patriotism, sacrifice and heroism. The predominant representation of war in Delbo's writings is that of the Nazi concentrationary universe, and more particularly of Auschwitz-Birkenau : it is a firsthand account of her own and other women's experience. This character of participatory witness of war until recently was mainly the prerogative of men, and consequently "sets apart her representation, alongside that of other ex-detainee women writers." However, having segregated them, the Nazis did not treat women and men differently in concentration camps, and thus it would seem that a woman's account should be similar to a man's: women and men were both subjected to ill-treatment, strenuous physical and often senseless work, in abysmal conditions of hygiene, nutrition and accommodation . They were made to work to the limits of their physical strength, before dying of exhaustion, lack of food, water and medical care. However, as Marlene E. Heinemann remarks: "Even the most impartial and sensitive male observer will be unable to provide an inside picture of women's experiences in the Nazi camps, since male and female prisoners were segregated in separate camps."3 Thus the singularity of Delbo's representation results in part from the segregation of men from women. It is a convoy of women and a women's extermination camp, Birkenau, placed under the supervision of female guards and SS that Delbo makes us "see," in her trilogy Auschwitz et après4 in particular; it is her experience and that of other women detainees that she makes us share...