In the final throes of the war the camp descends into what one witness calls “a vast irrational chaos”. Resistance was the preserve of the outstandingly brave.
Many formed intense lesbian bonds (ironically for a place punishing loose morals, the sex and abortion rates, accounted for by male staff, was high). Some adapted to their surroundings and saw their best hope of survival in affecting acceptance. And yet Helm comes up against the conundrum of how a human being makes choices in such circumstances. Choosing moral categories in a situation where all of the interned are victims is invidious. Waitz was finally beaten to death by a group of the toughest fellow prisoners. The 700-page account has to embrace the extremes of human degradation: enforced abortions, female guards behaving with unspeakable cruelty, heart-wrenching near-miss escapes, such as the trapeze artist Katharina Waitz, whose ruses infuriated the camp authorities so much that they dealt out vicious punishments to her fellow inmates in revenge. SPONSORED Meet the hero of Everest showing the way to climb mountains safely Shirley Ballas announces debut crime novel.Naomi Alderman on The Power: ‘we are living in a dystopia right now’.
‘It feels like a freak show’: the pain of watching A Little Life as a gay man.A tough female veteran of Special Operations, interned at Ravensbrück, discourages her from the book, saying simply: “It is too horrible.” Read More New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENTįrom the outset, Helm faces the difficulty of our squeamishness about the camps forthrightly.
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