Download A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France AudioBook Free
They were teachers, students, chemists, freelance writers, and housewives - a vocalist at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental care surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, paper subversive magazines, hid resisters, spirited Jews to safety, transported weaponry, and conveyed clandestine text messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15 who scrawled "V" for triumph on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to one another, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these fearless women were united in hatred and defiance of the Nazi occupiers.Eventually the Gestapo hunted down 230 of the women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and family members, these disparate individuals considered each other, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, vocation, and class as they found solace and power in their deep love and camaraderie. In January 1943, they were delivered to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only 49 would return to France.A Coach in Winter pulls on interviews with these women and their own families; German, French, and Polish archives; and World War II resistance organization documents to discover a dark chapter of record that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and success, and of the impressive, enduring electricity of female camaraderie.
