As much as we plan out our lives, the colleges we attend, the jobs we want, the people we attach ourselves to, control over our futures is nothing more than an illusion. For while some of us may have the fortune of executing their plans without incident, others have their hopes and dreams shattered by circumstances beyond their mastery: car accidents and pink slips, assaults and terminal illnesses. These are not foreseeable pitfalls. They are unanticipatable traps that, when sprung, have the power to devastate not just our lives, but the lives of those we love. And if they cannot be avoided, then they can happen to any of us, at any time, dreams broken on the altars of powers beyond our command and our imagination. This decidedly grim theme runs right through Ms. Moorehead's engaging, if bleak, micro history.
The year is 1940 and Europe is exploding into war. The French army has been humiliated by the German Wehrmacht which has subsequently blitzkrieged its way all the way to Paris. There, aided by a puppet government and the collaborative French police, the Third Reich establishes France as a civilized German territory, using its absolute power to slowly roust France's Jews, communists and other dissidents from places of authority. At first, the arrests lead only to imprisonment, but as the war progresses, the Third Reich reaches for a more permanent solution for those who it considers dead weight. Undesirables are taken from their homes and their workplaces and packed into trains which relocate them to brutal concentration camps in which these unfortunates suffer an unimaginable combination of humiliation and forced labor that not only takes the lives of millions, but reduces the survivors to but shadows of what they were.
Though many of France's key institutions shamefully capitulate to the will of the German occupation, in particular its police forces which pursue Nazi-approved targets with sycophantic zealousness, some lone voices speak out against the gradual dissolution of their country. From academics to laborers, these brave souls organize a resistance which endeavors to both disrupt Nazi operations in France and carve a path for a revival of the French army under Charles de Gaulle. Men and women band together to write speeches and create pamphlets, to pool cash and plot attacks, designed to advance the cause of a free France. However, before many of their schemes can come to fruition, the French police attack these dissident networks, making mass arrests of their own countrymen who are in turn deported to Germany deathcamps. These are their stories, of resistance and survival, of degradation and regret.
Though at times relentlessly tragic, A Train in Winter is an unforgettable examination of the French resistance and all that its members suffered at the hands of both the Nazis and the Vichy government. Focusing in particular on a group of young, sympathetic French women who wrote speeches and distributed pamphlets for the movement, Ms. Moorehead captures the essence of the resister. For to be such is to embrace a life of sacrifice, to put above ones own self-interest the rights and freedoms of a nation, and to pay for these beliefs with blood and servitude. Many of the women did not enter the resistance expecting to be captured and killed, but they knew these were possibilities. And yet, instead of standing by, instead of taking the easy path, these individuals chose to risk their precious lives for a future they held in their hearts. Moreover, they did so knowing that they stood to lose not only their lives, but the health and safety of their loved ones, spouses, parents, even sons and daughters.
But though the stories of the women Ms. Moorehead has singled out here are interesting enough, her work ascends to the truly mesmerizing when it chronicles the depravities and the spinelessness of the collaborators. Every occupying force needs them. For no land can be understood and operated without them. And so every occupier incentivizes men and women in key positions to keep their jobs and do their work, placing them into an ethical bind that is by no means easy to escape. But the degree to which these collaborators performed their tasks, oftentimes going above and beyond the call of duty simply to exercise their power, or, worse, to impress their masters, is as startling as it is revolting. The lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of brave souls who sacrificed all for their country were ruined by men and women bent on self-preservation at all costs, making a Faustian bargain with the Nazis for which, sadly, they never had to adequately pay.
As a history of a particular group of women, Ms. Moorehead's tale leaves a lot to be desired. She is too often interested in hailing their virtues, in celebrating their bond, than in truly examining their lives. Moreover, most of these events are now nearly 70 years in the past, making details decidedly blurrier than they appear here. However, as an exemplar of the triumphs and perils of the resisters, as a chronicle of Nazi cruelty and as an enduring statement about the nature of endurance in the face of unimaginable degradation, this is admirable work. Well worth the read... (3/5 Stars)x
No comments:
Post a Comment