Big Life, Little Death

On se comPrend à demi-mots. “We understand each other with half words, without finishing our sentences.” I learned this French expression from Fanny. It describes a kind of meeting of the minds, parallel sensibilities—each of us not merely anticipating or knowing what the other is thinking, but actually thinking alike at the same time, sharing the same reaction. It was a good way of describing our personal connection. Fanny remarked how striking it was that such complicity could exist between a young American student, born after the war, and a Polish-born Viennese refugee, French resister, survivor of two concentration camps, and lifelong Communist Party activist.

Fanny and I met in April 1978, on a train from Paris to East Berlin, for a pilgrimage to Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp for women, for the most part political prisoners. The pilgrimage, as it was (and is still) known, was an annual event organized by the Amicale de Ravensbrück, the association of former women prisoners that formed in 1945 for the purpose of educating the public about the camp, supporting the survivors, lobbying the government for recognition and benefits. Like the other amicales, or “friendship associations,” it was part of a network united by the umbrella organization FNDIRP, the National Federation of Deported and Imprisoned Resistance Fighters and Patriots. I was in Paris with a year-long fellowship to study the role of women in the French Resistance. Having contacted the organization in an effort to locate and interview women resisters, I met with its director, Cécile Lesieur. The timing was excellent; it so happened that some eighty survivors of Ravensbrück would soon be traveling to the camp for a pilgrimage. Cécile Lesieur invited me to join them. I could meet the members myself and visit the camp for the first time.

As the women collected at the Gare du Nord, I looked around and found myself in a sea of old people. But it was I who was young. In fact, most of them were in their sixties and seventies at the time. They were still hale and hearty enough to endure the two-day overnight trek by rail. In later years, when they became too frail for such a journey, the Amicale chartered a plane, but it wasn’t the same. In 1978 we traveled to Ravensbrück by train, just as some had done as early as 1943, and others as late as 1945. This time, the women were quick to remark, was different: they were passengers now, in compartments with seats and bunks, not livestock in cattle cars.

I found myself sharing a compartment with Fanny Dutet. Cécile had placed us together on purpose, as Fanny was known for her interest in young people and her activities with Communist Party–run youth groups. She was thin and vital and vigorous. She had a shock of short white hair and wore wool pants and a cardigan. She was among the older members of the group, and one of the most dynamic. She was not known for her reserve—life was too short for reserve. Fanny was the type of person who would ask people personal or philosophical questions in the first five minutes of meeting—for example, whether you preferred to feel remorse or regret. On another train, many years later, I once saw her interrupt a woman reading a Bible to ask her whether there could be God after Auschwitz. That was her idea of a good conversation starter. Though that conversation took place in German (that day we were en route to Paris from Vienna), it was easy to decipher: there was Fanny, rolling up her sleeve to reveal her tattoo, there was the hapless passenger, embarrassed and horrified. For Fanny, this was a reflex, a way of life: she embraced every opportunity to educate, to inform, to engage. When opportunities were scarce, she created them. It was also her mission for the Party, which is to say it was her life.

When I took my place in the compartment that day, a conversation began that has never...