Milena and Margarete by Gwen Strauss

TL;DR: This is rough to read, but well worth the time.
Source: NetGalley – Thank you to the publisher!!

Readability: A bit dense, it reads slowly and it’s heartbreaking at times.
Scope: While showing us the relationship between Grete and Milena we also have a lot of background and political information along with the heart breaking facts about the camp.
Sources: A little over 10% of this (according to the kindle edition I have) is sources and a bibliography.

Summary:

From the moment they met in 1940 in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Milena Jesenska and Margarete Buber-Neumann were inseparable. Czech Milena was Kafka’s first translator and epistolary lover, and a journalist opposed to fascism. A non-conformist, bi-sexual feminist, she was way ahead of her time. With the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, her home became a central meeting place for Jewish refugees. German Margarete, born to a middle-class family, married the son of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. But soon swept up in the fervor of the Bolshevik Revolution, she met her second partner, the Communist Heinz Neumann. Called to Moscow for his “political deviations,” he fell victim to Stalin’s purges while Margarete was exiled to the hell of the Soviet gulag. Two years later, traded by Stalin to Hitler, she ended up outside Berlin in Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp built for women.

Milena and Margarete loved each other at the risk of their lives. But in the post-war survivors’ accounts, lesbians were stigmatized, and survivors kept silent. This book explores those silences, and finally celebrates two strong women who never gave up and continue to inspire. As Margaret wrote: “I was thankful for having been sent to Ravensbrück, because it was there I met Milena.”

Thoughts:

Occasionally (and not as often as I should) I try to read something related to World War 2, and especially so if that focuses on women or queer folk. Milena and Margarete was a fantastic pick for this as I learned a lot, and was once again forced to look at the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, how othering others and turning them into nothing but politics can ultimately pay out.

Milena and Margarete were two very different women from different walks of like. One was a passionate Soviet citizen who believed in her country and the movement, but was disillusioned and sent as a prisoner trade to the camps. The other was Kafka’s first translator and political journalist. They met at the Ravensbrück Camp, a long erased women’s concentration camp.

This book does not hide away from the things that these women saw. Based on the survivors accounts and writings from one of the title women, we see the way the camps began and ended. At first it was ‘reeducation’ and ‘prison’, by the end it’s nothing more than senseless slaughter. We also see moments of light and joy as the two women, and others, fight to keep a sense of self and humanity in conditions that attempt to take that away.

The only thing I had to complain about this was just the pacing. I wasn’t entirely engrossed in this till well after 50% because of the introduction style of this to our women. But the contents are worth reading, the story needs to be told. If you’re a fan of World War 2 history or the history of women or queers, or all of the above this one is one you need to read.