Reviews
The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss
55_sallymander's review
5.0
THE NINE by Gwen Strauss
The Nine is about 9 women who banded together in friendship during World War 2, who planned and escaped captivity from the Nazis. The author has done extensive research on all nine of the women, one of which was her great-aunt Helene Podliasky. Most of the women had nicknames, which they are all referred to in the book. Helene's nickname was Christine.
The Nine:
Christine
Zara
Nicole
Lon
Guigui
Zinka
Josee
Jacky
Mena
The women were of different nationalities, most were arrested in Paris. Most were members of the Resistance, spies, fighting for freedom against oppression for all peoples.
Some of the women knew each other before they were arrested, most were non-Jewish. Several of the women were tortured before being sent on towards the Nazi concentration camps. One woman was very pregnant when arrested, she gave birth in a French prison, her baby was smuggled out and was raised for the remaining war years, by other family members.
The nine women were on the death marches near the end of World War II when they saw an opportunity and used it to escape guaranteed death. Several of the women were fluent in several languages and were able to convince the local officials of the towns they passed through that they were simply a group of French girls who had been factory workers, who were anxious to return home to Paris.
Author Gwen Strauss has done extensive research into the backgrounds and lives of all nine of the women. It is a courageous story of hope and devotion to one another. Highly recommend it, it gives you a look at a different side of the war, the women who fought so selflessly for the war effort and were punished to the breaking point for their beliefs.
Much gratitude to #stmartinspress for the complimentary copy of #thenine, I was under no obligation to post a review.
The Nine is about 9 women who banded together in friendship during World War 2, who planned and escaped captivity from the Nazis. The author has done extensive research on all nine of the women, one of which was her great-aunt Helene Podliasky. Most of the women had nicknames, which they are all referred to in the book. Helene's nickname was Christine.
The Nine:
Christine
Zara
Nicole
Lon
Guigui
Zinka
Josee
Jacky
Mena
The women were of different nationalities, most were arrested in Paris. Most were members of the Resistance, spies, fighting for freedom against oppression for all peoples.
Some of the women knew each other before they were arrested, most were non-Jewish. Several of the women were tortured before being sent on towards the Nazi concentration camps. One woman was very pregnant when arrested, she gave birth in a French prison, her baby was smuggled out and was raised for the remaining war years, by other family members.
The nine women were on the death marches near the end of World War II when they saw an opportunity and used it to escape guaranteed death. Several of the women were fluent in several languages and were able to convince the local officials of the towns they passed through that they were simply a group of French girls who had been factory workers, who were anxious to return home to Paris.
Author Gwen Strauss has done extensive research into the backgrounds and lives of all nine of the women. It is a courageous story of hope and devotion to one another. Highly recommend it, it gives you a look at a different side of the war, the women who fought so selflessly for the war effort and were punished to the breaking point for their beliefs.
Much gratitude to #stmartinspress for the complimentary copy of #thenine, I was under no obligation to post a review.
achoward's review
5.0
How do people withstand the most horrific abuses performed by a nation led by a madman?
There are many books about soldiers surviving what were basically death camps when they were taken prisoner, about well planned and executed escapes, about spies hanging on, in hiding, while an entire militarized police force look for them.
The Nine has all of that, and more. It's the story of nine women, resistance fighters in WWII, captured and interrogated by French police before being sent off to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo and ultimately imprisoned at a work camp.
The primary focus is on the author's great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who ultimately became the de facto leader of the group as they met one another in their journey from freedom to prison and back to freedom again.
Where this book shines comes after all of that - after the beatings, the torture, the forced work, and all manner of atrocities. As Germany was facing defeat, some of the camps, including the one housing The Nine, were sent on forced marches, to move prisoners from outlying areas about to be overrun, to prisons closer to what was left in German hands. During their march, they took a chance and fled the march, running into the forest, heading for France.
This journey, free of guards and the wire of prisons, wasn't any easier than that. Along the way, they found both people willing to help them, and people who had no interest in doing so, preferring to turn them in. They also found those who wanted to use them for their own ends - soldiers, for instance, who thought the Allies would look more favorably on them if they were found assisting a group of former prisoners.
The author is a poet, and it shows. It's a fantastic piece of narrative nonfiction, although I would say that if you're just dipping your toes into the water of the cruelest parts of WWII, or if you're just learning about it, you might want to start with a broader history first, to understand the whole of the war, then narrow to the final days of the European theater before reading this. Doing so will better inform the reader about that particular point in the war, and how the engineered system developed by the German leadership was breaking down.
Much like Night (Elie Wiesel, another must-read), The Nine captures the sense of how it was to live with daily atrocities, and how people came through them.
Highly recommended - a five star read.
Thanks to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy
Pub date: May 4, 2021
There are many books about soldiers surviving what were basically death camps when they were taken prisoner, about well planned and executed escapes, about spies hanging on, in hiding, while an entire militarized police force look for them.
The Nine has all of that, and more. It's the story of nine women, resistance fighters in WWII, captured and interrogated by French police before being sent off to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo and ultimately imprisoned at a work camp.
The primary focus is on the author's great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who ultimately became the de facto leader of the group as they met one another in their journey from freedom to prison and back to freedom again.
Where this book shines comes after all of that - after the beatings, the torture, the forced work, and all manner of atrocities. As Germany was facing defeat, some of the camps, including the one housing The Nine, were sent on forced marches, to move prisoners from outlying areas about to be overrun, to prisons closer to what was left in German hands. During their march, they took a chance and fled the march, running into the forest, heading for France.
This journey, free of guards and the wire of prisons, wasn't any easier than that. Along the way, they found both people willing to help them, and people who had no interest in doing so, preferring to turn them in. They also found those who wanted to use them for their own ends - soldiers, for instance, who thought the Allies would look more favorably on them if they were found assisting a group of former prisoners.
The author is a poet, and it shows. It's a fantastic piece of narrative nonfiction, although I would say that if you're just dipping your toes into the water of the cruelest parts of WWII, or if you're just learning about it, you might want to start with a broader history first, to understand the whole of the war, then narrow to the final days of the European theater before reading this. Doing so will better inform the reader about that particular point in the war, and how the engineered system developed by the German leadership was breaking down.
Much like Night (Elie Wiesel, another must-read), The Nine captures the sense of how it was to live with daily atrocities, and how people came through them.
Highly recommended - a five star read.
Thanks to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy
Pub date: May 4, 2021
adamsw216's review
4.0
The Nine is the story of nine incredible women who were part of the French Resistance during World War II, caught, imprisoned in a concentration camp, and escaped from the Nazis to survive the war. I highly recommend learning more about this story as another important piece of history that should not be forgotten.
Author Gwen Strauss weaves the story together by juxtaposing the background information of each individual woman with the narrative story of their life in the concentration camp and eventual escape. The result feels a little cumbersome, but I think it works well enough. Additionally, Strauss readily admits that she has had to make some inferences at the edges of what facts she was able to gather. I presume a vast majority of the dialogue presented in the narrative parts of the story are of her own invention based on the few notes and letters the women wrote after the war, recounting their story. Also, Strauss has this strange habit of repeating statements that were just given a few sentences back several times throughout the text. That being said, Strauss' contributions to the narrative seem are minimal enough to allow the feel of the story to accentuate the facts, and not the other way around. I also did appreciate the parts of the story that included details of the author's journey to ascertain interviews and documents that allowed her to write this book. If anything, I wish there was more of this, because sometimes it seems a little unclear where she found certain facts. This is a worthwhile read.
Author Gwen Strauss weaves the story together by juxtaposing the background information of each individual woman with the narrative story of their life in the concentration camp and eventual escape. The result feels a little cumbersome, but I think it works well enough. Additionally, Strauss readily admits that she has had to make some inferences at the edges of what facts she was able to gather. I presume a vast majority of the dialogue presented in the narrative parts of the story are of her own invention based on the few notes and letters the women wrote after the war, recounting their story. Also, Strauss has this strange habit of repeating statements that were just given a few sentences back several times throughout the text. That being said, Strauss' contributions to the narrative seem are minimal enough to allow the feel of the story to accentuate the facts, and not the other way around. I also did appreciate the parts of the story that included details of the author's journey to ascertain interviews and documents that allowed her to write this book. If anything, I wish there was more of this, because sometimes it seems a little unclear where she found certain facts. This is a worthwhile read.
susannadkm's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.5
As they traveled through Germany they passed town after ruined town. At first it felt good to see how the country had been flattened. Then they were overwhelmed by the feeling of desolation and waste.”
The Nine primarily covers the days-long journey of French political prisoners towards the American army on the other side of the Front after escaping a death march in the last weeks of World War II. The story is interspersed with the women’s backstories and experiences in the camps.
As the great-niece of one of the women, the author asks important questions: When and how do you talk to relatives about trauma? How do you accurately record events if survivors don’t want to recall horrific memories?
In 1964, one of the women who published an account of Ravensbruck and the escape was rewarded with “a scathing letter to the editor [from another Ravensbruck survivor] admonishing Nicole for publishing such painful memories. No one was interested in this story, the woman argued. It was unseemly.”
There were three main areas of WWII that I hadn’t learned much of before: the experience of the occupied French, the final days of the war in rural Germany, and the appalling treatment of French women accused of “horizontal collaboration” with Nazis. This could include anything from sleeping with Nazis to selling them food or laundry services.
“Roughly 20,000 women, in almost every department of France, were publicly shaved by frenzied mobs. France’s humiliation, Vichy’s crime of collaboration was placed on the female body, just as Pétain had placed the blame for the military’s shockingly quick loss to Germany on the low morals of the female population.”
Unfortunately, the story-telling lacks perfect coherence and jumps from story to story.
jessurban's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
4.5
Well researched and informative look at the life of these 9 women. I very much so enjoyed it.
jeffphilly's review against another edition
5.0
A story of great resilience and courage
Thank you to the author for telling this story. These 9 women displayed an unbelievable amount of courage resilience in their journey. On top of that they simply never ever gave up hope, not in ravensbruck, and not when they were on the run. It would have been far easier to simply give up any hope for the future at any point. They had all that courage that they certainly displayed after their arrest but also prior to their arrest. As women in the 1940s they were certainly not expected to take such prominent roles in the French resistance movement. But they did take those risks at significant risk to themselves and their families. Not everyone was so brave in the face of the Gestapo. On the other hand some cooperated with the Gestapo rather than remain loyal to their native France. Many would have simply given up even after escaping from the Nazis as they still had an awfully long way to reach the allied lines. Keep in mind that their entire escape they were on foot, often without proper clothing and often without proper footwear if they had any at all. I never would have thought that an escape such as this would have been possible. Escaping from the custody of the Nazis was an accomplishment in itself. But escaping to the allied lines in the manner described was an entirely different matter. These 9 women are the definitions of fortitude persistence and perseverance. That about says it for these women. As for the author I thought that she did a great job of describing in great detail each woman and their families and with the descriptions of the various cultures encountered both in and out of the camp.
Thank you to the author for telling this story. These 9 women displayed an unbelievable amount of courage resilience in their journey. On top of that they simply never ever gave up hope, not in ravensbruck, and not when they were on the run. It would have been far easier to simply give up any hope for the future at any point. They had all that courage that they certainly displayed after their arrest but also prior to their arrest. As women in the 1940s they were certainly not expected to take such prominent roles in the French resistance movement. But they did take those risks at significant risk to themselves and their families. Not everyone was so brave in the face of the Gestapo. On the other hand some cooperated with the Gestapo rather than remain loyal to their native France. Many would have simply given up even after escaping from the Nazis as they still had an awfully long way to reach the allied lines. Keep in mind that their entire escape they were on foot, often without proper clothing and often without proper footwear if they had any at all. I never would have thought that an escape such as this would have been possible. Escaping from the custody of the Nazis was an accomplishment in itself. But escaping to the allied lines in the manner described was an entirely different matter. These 9 women are the definitions of fortitude persistence and perseverance. That about says it for these women. As for the author I thought that she did a great job of describing in great detail each woman and their families and with the descriptions of the various cultures encountered both in and out of the camp.
philodora's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Confinement, Sexual assault, Suicide, Child death, Abortion, Antisemitism, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Body shaming, Racism, Death, Death of parent, Misogyny, Murder, Police brutality, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Infertility, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, War, Classism, and Deportation
spookysierra's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5