Chamberet: Recollections from an Ordinary Childhood

by Claude Morhange-Begue, Austryn Wainhouse (Translator)

Overview

In April 1944, the SS paused in the French village of Chamberet on routine business and left with the author's mother. For the rest of the war the mother was interned at Auschwitz. She returned at war's end, her health irreparably impaired but wanting to talk. Recording her story, however, fell to Morhange-Begue, and here she bears witness on her mother's behalf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810160774
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2000
Series:	Memoir/Holocaust Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	115
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

CLAUDE MORHANGE-BÉGUÉ is the daughter of French Resistance member Zina Morhange. 

AUSTRYN WAINHOUSE is a translator. His other translations include de Sade's Justine; Bataille's Lascaux; or, the Birth of Art, the Prehistoric Paintings; and Klossowski's Robert Ce Soir.  

Editorial Reviews

"The honest of the author's recollections and the fidelity with which she records the growth of her own understanding, both at the time and in the years since, seem as worthy a response to her mother's fortitude as one can imagine. Knowing that she cannot write her mother's story, she fairly and beautifully writes her own." —Blair Birmelin, New Directions of Women

From the Publisher

This intense narrative recounts the author's experiences as an eight-year-old girl in the Limousin village of Chamberet in 1944-45. In April 1944 Claude's mother, a doctor and Resistance member, was denounced by the town's other doctor to a passing SS division and deported to Auschwitz. She suffered greatly, but fortunately survived. Reunited with Claude after a long convalescence, she talked incessantly of the horrors of the camp. For the instruction of her own daughter, Claude writes in sometimes florid prose about life without her mother. Recommended for YA and large World War II collections. William C. McCully, Park Ridge P.L., Ill.

Library Journal