1. From Ravensbrück to Algiers and Noisy-le-Grand: Dialogues with Deportation
- Author:
- Donald Reid
- Publication Date:
- 09-2004
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- French Politics, Culture Society
- Institution:
- Conference Group on French Politics Society
- Abstract:
- Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz drew on their experiences as deported resisters at the Ravensbrück concentration camp to put forth narratives of deportation with compelling sets of imperatives for survivors and their audiences: Tillion placed the experience of camp prisoners in a continuum of clochardisation preceded by slavery and colonialism, enterprises in which France played a larger role than Germany, while de Gaulle Anthonioz extended the camp experience past 1945 to the creation and maintenance of an underclass in advanced capitalist societies like France. Reflection on their years at Ravensbrück encouraged Tillion and de Gaulle Anthonioz to look upon those left outside of prosperous postwar France - clochards in Algeria and the desperately poor in France - as being of the world they had lived in in the camps. This encouraged them to revisit their experience as providing understanding and insights for the survival and resistance of these disinherited.
- Political Geography:
- France, Germany, and Algeria