“The Passion According to Ravensbrück” – Poems Written in the Camp by Ravensbrück Inmate Micheline Morel – ...

“The Passion According to Ravensbrück” – Poems Written in the Camp by Ravensbrück Inmate Micheline Morel – Inscribed and Signed Copy by the Author

La Passion selon Ravensbrück – “The Passion According to Ravensbrück” by Micheline Maurel. Paris, 1965. A collection of poems written by French poet Micheline Maurel, a former inmate of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, composed from the time of her arrest in 1943 until the camp’s liberation. Inscribed and signed copy by the author.

Poems written under harsh living conditions, documenting the impossible daily reality and the profound emotional distress within the women’s camp. Maurel noted the exact date on which each poem was composed, and in some cases recorded the specific circumstances under which it was written. Thus, for example, in August 1943 she wrote: “Written while the German officer came up to the rooms with the lists of those who were to leave for Germany, ” expressing the wish: “And yet, Sir, perhaps you will save me… before it is over, before the lists are ready…”. Her poems convey her deepest and bleakest emotions, reflecting life alongside death: “If I die here, do not come to weep around my bed, ” and, in another poem: “Who knows, perhaps I have already died…”. In the poem “And Sometimes When the Day Ends” she writes of bitter loneliness in the camp, the pain of bereavement, the torment of hunger, and the prayers uttered in moments of despair. Her poetry moves along a continuum between testimony and memory, and a calm, precise literary processing. Thematically, it avoids overt sentimentality or dramatization, instead employing restrained, almost dry language to express trauma, loss, and reflections on life.

Micheline Maurel [1916–2009] a French writer and poet, a member of the Résistance, who was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1943. 

She completed advanced studies in classical literature in Lyon. In 1940, she joined the French Resistance as part of the "Marco Polo" network. Filled with idealism, she remained in Lyon with an agrégation scholarship (a prestigious academic program), and in 1941–1942, she taught literature there. On June 19, 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Romainville fortress. On August 29, 1943, she was deported to Neubrandenburg, a subcamp of Ravensbrück, where she was assigned the number 22410. She survived there for twenty months, until she was liberated with the advance of the Russian forces in April 1945. In May 1945, she returned to Toulon. The effects of the deprivation and abuse she endured in the camp stayed with her throughout her life. After the war, she worked in education from September 1946 to June 1948, and later took up a position as a translator at the World Health Organization and at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

85 pages. Very good condition.