On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, 230 French women
resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent
on a train to Auschwitz--the only train, in the four years of
German occupation, to take women of the Resistance to a death camp.
The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15, the eldest a farmer''s wife of
68; among them were teachers, biochemists, salesgirls, secretaries,
housewives and university lecturers. Six of the women were still
alive in 2010 and able to tell their stories of the great affection
and camaraderie that took hold among the group. They became
friends, and it was precisely this friendship that kept so many of
them alive.
Drawing on interviews with survivors and
their families, on German, French and Polish archives, and on
documents held by WW2 resistance organisations, A Train in
Winter covers a harrowing part of history that is, ultimately,
a portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and endurance, and of the
particular qualities of female friendship.
CAROLINE MOOREHEAD is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya
Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. Well known for her work in
human rights, she has published a history of the Red Cross and a
book about refugees, Human Cargo, and her most recent book
is Dancing to the Precipice, a biography of Lucie de la
Tour du Pin. The author lives in London and Italy.
1. What is the importance of women's friendship in A
Train in Winter? How is it shown, what forms does it take,
and what difference does it make to the lives of the women
described in the book?
2. How has this book changed your view of World War Two, the
French Resistance, the role of women in wartime, or the Holocaust,
or another subject discussed in the book?
3. Caroline Moorehead takes care in the book to tell individual
stories. Which of these had the greatest impact on you while
reading the book, and why?
4. What motives for the women's resistance work are presented in
A Train in Winter? Are their reasons the same as
those of men?
5. What will you remember about A Train in
Winter?
6. If you could ask one of the survivors of the Convoi des
31000 a question about her experiences, what would it be?
7. Why do you think the history discussed in A Train in
Winter was buried for so long?
8. What do you think was behind "attentisme" - holding
on, waiting, doing nothing - the initial French reaction to the
Occupation?
9. The women of the Convoi des 31000 longed to come
home from the camps - but then those few who did so found their
return to be sometimes impossibly hard. Why was this the case?
10. What lessons should we learn from A Train in
Winter?
11. What role did the Communist Party play in the French
Resistance? How were perspectives on it altered, first by the
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and then by the German invasion of
the Soviet Union?
12. Debate the issue of French collaboration with the Nazi
authorities as it is described in the book. What do you think you
would do, if you were placed in some of the situations Caroline
Moorehead describes?
13. What do you make of the turn in recent historical writing to
"microhistories" of individual moments and stories, rather than
grand abstract narratives? Which kind of historical writing do you
prefer, and why?
14. If you could invite Caroline Moorehead to your book club
discussion, what would you like to ask her about A Train in
Winter, and why?
