Calvaire de femmes – The women’s pulleys, testimony from the camps Saint-Gilles – Waldheim – Cottbus – Ravensbrug – Mathausen, by Constance Liégeois, published by marsia-ciney, 1945 – first edition. Copy signed by the author: “C. Liégeois 1946”.
An early testimony published at the end of the war in November 1945, describing a period of two years from November 26, 1943 to June 25, 1945. Liégeois – of Belgian descent, was captured by the Germans and taken to St. Giles with two of her friends as a ‘political prisoner’. From there she was taken to Germany in difficult road conditions and under the close supervision of the SS. She was imprisoned in the largest women’s camp in Germany – Ravensbrück, and towards the end of the war she was transferred to Mauthausen. Her testimony encompasses a period of about two years of hardship and suffering. In the Ravensbrück camp she worked in forced labor transporting Blocks and stones in carts under daily whiplash, in constant hunger at a temperature of 20 degrees below zero, and in severe dysentery conditions, with many of her friends finding her death near her. Liégeois managed to survive until the Red Cross arrived in Mauthausen – when she transport towards the end of the war. She wrote down the difficult things in great detail, and published them in the book before us about four months after her release, in November 1945.
124 [2] p. 20 cm. Very good condition.
