The Slave

Micheline Maurel was a well-noted academic who had achieved a measure of recognition before the advent of the Second World War. She had been appointed Professeur de Lettres at Lyon 1941-1942 in the Nazi-Occupied zone of France. However, by night, she was a clandestine member of the French resistance, acting as a courier and gatherer of intelligence; she was arrested in 1943 by the Gestapo and deported to Neubrandenburg, part of the Ravensbrück concentration camp complex. Through iron will, she survived the torture, starvation, beatings, and degradations of the SS for a horrendous twenty months. Even after the Russians liberated the camp the sufferings of the inmates were not over as they were forced marched and mistreated by their supposed liberators. In this stark memoir, she recounts the inhumanity of the hell that was in her words 'An Ordinary Camp'.