Days and Memory

After France fell to the Germans during WW II, Delbo and her husband, Communist and Resistance leader Georges Dudach, were imprisoned. Dudach was shot and killed, and Delbo was sent to Auschwitz. Days and Memory , originally published in France soon after the author's death in 1985, is a testimony of atrocities experienced and witnessed by Delbo in the concentration camp and includes stories recounted by others of suffering borne both during and after the war. Delbo ( None of Us Will Return ) is an objective interpreter of these horrors, allowing the scenes to speak for themselves, yet grief and sorrow are palpable on every page. Unforgettable is the sketch in which a woman, called out of the barracks during the night by the roll-call siren, searches desperately with the help of other women to locate her galoshes in the snow, while the barracks leader swings at them with her club. The most harrowing piece commemorates the mass execution of all of the men in a Greek village by the Germans in 1943 and the women who must find a burial place for 1300 bodies. (Aug.)