This memoir chronicles the heartbreaking struggle and unbreakable spirit of Charlotte Aline Virmoux, the author’s great-aunt. Living in France through both World Wars, Aline was forced to endure the unspeakable horror of the gassing that over time claimed the life of her brother and father, who both fought in the First World War, unaware of the horrors that would challenge her next. She and her husband, Petit Louis, did their part as members of Evasion Pernod, an arm of the occupied French Resistance that helped locate and extract downed pilots, prisoners of war, and other vulnerable targets trapped behind enemy lines and bring them home. One night, as Louis worked his radios to transmit secret information, his window of opportunity to operate safely closed, yet he went on for a risky amount of time.

Detected by the Germans, Louis and Aline were abducted from their home by the SS, who took them in for brutal torture under the guise of questioning. They never saw each other again after that night, and even in the twilight of World War II, Aline was forced to endure life at the brutal concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Life at the camp was designed to break her will and her mind as well as put an excruciating toll on her body. Still, along with some other French prisoners, Aline was determined to survive. After ten months of indignity and inhumanity, Aline found her opportunity and escaped as the Allied armies were advancing on the territory. Wearing the coat of a dead German soldier and holding the machine gun of a downed Soviet soldier, Aline made her way through the battlefield and earned her freedom with both her bravery and an act that defiantly proved that the Nazis did not break her humanity.

The details of Aline’s story, as are to be expected with any tale of the horrors of life inside of a brutal concentration camp, are heartbreaking and often graphic, and readers are not spared the severity of the cruelty and the conditions the prisoners were forced to deal with. The author’s personal story, whose formative memories are of being uprooted and witnessing the friendly fire of bombings designed to force the enemy out of hiding, is combined with his great aunt’s, who had to pay a more direct and horrifying cost of her own. This creates a multi-faceted and tragic narrative that follows generations. As readers learn not just about the short-term suffering but the long-term and lingering effects of life in a war zone and as a prisoner, it is hard not to be affected by the irreparable damage caused in that environment.

There are also multiple sections of the book dedicated to photographs of the family members, villages, and demolished neighborhoods ruined by relentless bombing, the types of planes and vehicles involved in the conflict, and even the numerous medals from various governments awarded to Aline for her bravery even in her darkest hours. This book joins a list of other poignant and devastating memoirs of concentration camp life, particularly for women. Certainly not for the faint of heart, the incredible story of Aline is full of inspiration and perseverance in the most grim of situations. For those that can stomach some of the most sickening actions to occur in modern society, there are lessons of courage here that will stick with the reader long after the book is completed.

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