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Elyse Walters

October 01 2015

Update: On Sept. 18th, 2018....Marceline died. Incredible woman!!!! This book she wrote really touches on many levels. I highly recommend it. The year was 1944... Marceline's Loridan-Ivens, 15 years old, was separated from her father at the internment camp of Drancy, France. ( they had been arrested from the French Vichy government) Marceline's father says: "You might come back because you are young, but I will not come back". Marceline's father, didn't come back. He died in the Holocaust. This small book - ( one sitting read), is graphic in details. It's also one of the most penetrating-visually-descriptive-(REAL & RAW), books I've read by a surviving person from the Holocaust in many years. No spoilers in this review. Marceline Loridan-I'vens is 86 years old. She is one of the 160 alive who came back --- 76,500 French Jews were sent to AuschwitzBirkenau. ( she to Birkenau - her dad to Auschwitz). Six million Jews died. This book she writes [I highly ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO READ IT], won't take long... but is one of the stories that will stay with you. It's written as a letter to her father. The loss and grief from his death has never fully gone away. (I relate to her 'forever-tattooed-loss' of her father...having loss my own father when I was 4 years old). That type of loss is like a cloud that follows a person for a lifetime. Yet, at the same time, Marceline has an extraordinary 'adult' life in many ways. She is a woman making a difference in the world. To me... This is one of the BOOKS-to-READ about THE HOLOCAUST -( there is no bullshit, excuse my French). I rank the quality of this book as highly as I do "Night", by Elie Wiesel. To write "But You Did Not Come Back" - for the world to read is brave. What blows my mind even more-- is that Marceline is 86 years old! Other living Holocaust survivors in my life - close to her age - 'NEVER' even talked about what happened to them in those camps - let alone allow the world to read. When the movie Schindler's List came out, it was, "NO WAY". ( yet, to be honest... That movie 'helped' many living Holocaust survivors begin to talk for the first time - ever!) It took a very long time to realized that staying quiet wasn't the best thing. It brings me to tears when Marceline and other living survivors speak out. Soon there won't be any Holocaust survivors alive to tell their stories. We only have so much time left. The average person hasn't any idea how remarkable Marceline Loridan-Ivens is. At 75 years old, she started a new career. Marceline established herself as a significant voice in the Jewish Film cinema: feature film maker, ... starting at age *75*. She had already been a documentary filmmaker and was an activist for Algerian Independence. Speaking out at 86 years of age - Marceline is making a great contribution. I'd love to meet her myself ... ( I would tell her about the stories told to me from family & friends close in my life too)... Towards the end of her book she talks about how she doesn't ever see antiSemitism going away. "It is too deeply rooted in the world". Israel never turned out to be the land of peace Jews hoped for. Israel has been at war ever since it was created. Anti-Semitism in France and throughout Europe is growing. Things are getting tense in France again. Once again, we are reminded through this exquisitely written book never to forget what happened - THE BOOK REALLY DESERVES TO BE READ!! This book will be released in stores in January - before the next International Holocaust Remembrance Day - January 27th. Thank You Grove Atlantic, Netgalley, and Marceline Loridan-Ivens!!!!!

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Angela M

November 12 2015

I've read many novels about the Holocaust and several memoirs and non-fiction books and the most important message that I take from any of them is how vital it is that we don't forget so that this never happens again. A stunning fact is that given the number of years that have passed, there will soon be no living survivors so it was with utmost consideration that I read this memoir and highly recommend it everyone. As of the time of writing of this book, there were only 160 survivors still alive , according to author Marceline Loridan-Ivens . The records and the stories based on what happened will remain and for me it is a privilege that Marceline Loridan-Ivens shares her personal history as a holocaust survivor with us . This is memoir , one she writes to her father , a response to a letter that he had smuggled to her while she was fifteen at Birkenau and he at the nearby Auschwitz. Certainly the physical suffering is depicted here but the emotional impact is depicted in a way that will pierce your heart as it well should . I wish I could read French so I could pick up every nuance of everything she wrote , but I trust that the translation is a good one . It was a beautifully written if it's possible to say such a thing about such horrific things. This is an amazing , beautiful memoir, so affecting, like nothing I've read about the Holocaust. "If you only knew, all of you , how the camp remains in all our minds , and will until we die." So when these 160 survivors are no longer alive, we have to remember that it happened. Everyone should read this book . Thank you Grove Atlantic and NetGalley.

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Jen CAN

September 10 2016

A gut wrenching read that is so raw it hurts. This is about a young Jewish girl and the loss of her beloved father at Auschwitz. It is a memoir chronicling the years being held in the prison camp and the hope and anguish that comes with searching for a missing father. The survival itself is a burden. The questions she continually asked, where are you? Where were you when ...? The torture knowing you were not far away, but cannot see you; talk to you. The grief. The helplessness. The loss of hope. You are very brave for writing this story, Marceline Loridan-Ivens. And I thank you for your courage. As you ask yourself if your survival was worth it in the end, I hope you say yes, as you are a reminder to the world of this horrible past that must never happen again and we must never, ever forget.5*

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Violet wells

August 22 2017

The memory of someone who survived a Nazi death camp. If I try to imagine what it must be like to carry such a memory through life my imagination fails me. We’re talking about someone who witnessed, suffered, even participated in unspeakable horrors every single day for months, sometimes years. A person who has experienced such a relentless barrage of horrors that some of them only return to memory in later life. As if there’s always another new recollection of horror waiting in the memory to be developed. A person haunted by the faces of the most cruel and hateful individuals imaginable. For example the SS officer who beat her unconscious for hugging her father. How could you ever stop hating that man? And how could life ever be normal again when you’re carrying in your body and mind all that hatred, all that horror? The answer is it can’t. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book the same day I started it. It helps that this only runs to 100 pages but it’s written with such intimacy and honesty that you feel like the author is sharing her experiences with you personally and so it’s unthinkable that you should walk away and delay the rest of the story until tomorrow. Marceline Loridan-Ivens was arrested with her father while running away through the garden of the house where they lived during a raid. It’s often said the French police were just obeying orders but it takes zeal to catch someone who is running, especially when that someone is a fifteen year old child. The French do not come out of this book well. Especially when we learn Marceline still encountered lots of anti-semitism after the war. What perhaps distinguishes this book from other holocaust stories is the very moving and unfiltered account of the aftermath, the lifetime of emotional damage the camps did not only to the survivors but the families of survivors, even those who were “lucky” not to be arrested. The war was never over for them. The book is written in the form of a letter to her father who didn’t survive the camps. Rarely can you believe the blurb on the covers of books but in this case it’s all true – this book is “haunting and unputdownable”.

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Maziyar Yf

February 14 2023

و تو برنگشتی شرح صمیمانه و صادقانه ای ایست از ارسلین لوریدان ایونس نویسنده و کارگردان فرانسوی . او در این کتاب بسیار کوتاه خاطرات خود را از دنیای شیطانی آشویتس – بیرکه ناو بیان کرده ، دنیای مخوفی که او را از پانزده سالگی به تصرف خود در آورده و هیچ گاه او را رها نکرده است . بخشی از کتاب خانم ایونس یاد آوری خاطراتش در آشویتس و تلاش برای زنده ماندن در آن جهنم بوده ، او با پدر در یک اردوگاه بوده و رنج طاقت فرسای او را می دیده ، پدر گویی می دانسته که هرگز از آشوویتس بر نخواهد گشت . قسمت دیگر کتاب ، نویسنده با وجود آن که آزاد شده اما گویی در یاد و خاطرات اردوگاه مرگ اسیر مانده ، او دیگر در ایستگاه قطار از ترس می لرزد ، از حمام های دوش دار گریزان است و دود کارخانه ها حال او را به هم می زند . جسم او اگرچه آزاد شده اما روح وروان او همانند سوفی <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2698406291" rel="nofollow noopener"> در انتخاب سوفی </a> و پریمو لوی فرزانه در اگر این نیز انسان است اسیر و زندانی آشوویتس مانده . باری که خانم ایونس و یا دیگر بازماندگان اردوگاه های مرگ به دوش می کشیده اند سخت و طاقت فرسا بوده ، نه سوفی آنرا می تواند تحمل کند و نه پریمو لوی . گویا ایونس دست کم از ازاین دو اقبال بیشتری داشته . درپایان او هم همانند دوستش به این نتیجه می رسد که برگشتن از اردوگاه کار درستی نبوده ، اما همچنان امیدوار می ماند که شاید در آخرین لحظه زندگی و قبل از این که از دنیا برود در جواب این سوال بتواند بگوید که بله ، ارزشش را داشت .

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Diane S ☔

October 01 2015

What can I say after reading this? Words seem so trite after what Marceline and many, many, too many others went through. She is only fifteen when their chateau in France is overtaken by the Nazis. While most of her family escapes, she and her beloved father are captured. Taken first to Drancy, they are separated and he is taken to Auschwitz, she to the neighboring camp Birkenau. He manages to send her once last note. How do you live after going through such extreme trauma? Never forgetting, always grieving for the father who never returns, people and family who cannot possibly understand. So heartbreaking, such strength just to get up in the morning. Am in awe of all she accomplished in her life. Very profound, emotionally stirring. Unforgettable.

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Carol

December 03 2017

1944 Auschwitz - BurkenauA survivor - Marceline Loridan-IvensArrested in occupied France at age 15 with her father.....a now 89 year old Marceline writes a heartfelt tribute and memoir to her beloved father....who did not come home.Written as in answer to his letter, Marceline recalls a time of horror and loss inside the electrified fence of her existence. Haunted memories and nightmares rest among her father's smuggled letter and their few precious moments together while incarcerated....moments that cost them dearly.BUT YOU DID NOT COME BACK is a short read, but truly a memoir of love and pain that continued throughout the life of a survivor....even when the war was over.

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Iris P

December 01 2015

<a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/28329263.But_You_Did_Not_Come_Back_A_Memoir" title="But You Did Not Come Back A Memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir</a> <a href="http://s1341.photobucket.com/user/irisper01/media/Marceline%203_zpss1o3vyyi.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459719952i/18647267.jpg" alt="Marceline Loridan photo Marceline 3_zpss1o3vyyi.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> Marceline Loridans-Ivens - The Author <blockquote>"Surviving makes other people’s tears unbearable. You might drown in them.”</blockquote> <blockquote>― Marceline Loridan-Ivens, But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir</blockquote> **************************************************** “I received an ARC of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!” “I was quite a cheerful person, you know, in spite of what happened to us”, that is how <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/3106167.Marceline_Loridan_Ivens" title="Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">Marceline Loridan-Ivens</a> introduces herself to us, but let me start this review by saying this: <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/28329263.But_You_Did_Not_Come_Back_A_Memoir" title="But You Did Not Come Back A Memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir</a> is not one of those uplifting, heartwarming, feel good memoirs; it’s not optimistic, spiritually elevating or full of assurances and hope for the future of the human race. Loridan-Ivens's prose is surprisingly factual and unsentimental. My sense is that's because she didn't feel the need to enhance or amplify the harrowing nature of her narrative, the reality of what happened to her and her family speaks by itself. Sometimes you read stories that ask you to re-examine your views about fate. And by that I mean fate with a capital F; the notion that our lives are somehow “pre-ordained” and that there's nothing we can do to change that pre-determined outcome (a concept by the way, that runs very much counter to the "Free Will" Protestant theology that was instilled on me as a youngster). But when you learn about that soldier who was killed on the last day of his deployment, or the person who was supposed to be on the plane that crashed but didn’t make it to the airport on time, or the concentration camp prisoner whose fate was decided by a Nazi "Angel of Death" officer, whom after a quick glimpse and without an afterthought, determined whether that person would live or die. It does makes you wonder. In March 1944, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/3106167.Marceline_Loridan_Ivens" title="Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">Marceline Loridan-Ivens</a> and her family were living a quiet, relative sheltered life in Nazi-occupied France. All of this changed when she and her father, Solomon Rozenberg, were captured and sent to Drancy, a location that served as a layover to the extermination camps located in Poland. Immediately after their arrival the two of them got separated, Solomon was left in Auschwitz while Marceline was sent to Birkenau, a women’s concentration camp. The two places were separated by a mere 3 kilometers. Marceline was only 16 years old. At Birkenau, Marceline was put to work digging trenches for bodies, unloading potatoes and building the railway track that led directly to the gas ovens. One day Marceline and Solomon catch a glimpse of each other. Marceline is euphoric when she sees him but her happiness is short-lived when soldiers savagely beat her into unconsciousness. A few weeks later, Solomon convinces a fellow prisoner to smuggle an onion, a tomato and a short letter for her, all things that were considered unimaginable luxuries in the camp. The note is only a few sentences long and is addressed, “To my darling little girl” and signed with Solomon's Yiddish name, Shloïme. The risk he has taken is punishable by death, but this note gives Marceline hope and encourages her to keep fighting for her life. Marceline has to make the note disappear so that the camp officers won’t find it on her, the narrative of this memoir is framed around her inability to recall the message her father wrote. <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/28329263.But_You_Did_Not_Come_Back_A_Memoir" title="But You Did Not Come Back A Memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir</a> is Marceline's response to that note, in it she painfully contemplates and reflects on what Solomon might have written to her and the precious memories she lost. <blockquote> "That may seem unimportant today" she tells him, "But that piece of paper, folded in four, your writing, the steps of the man walking from you to me, proved that we still existed." </blockquote> <a href="http://s1341.photobucket.com/user/irisper01/media/Marceline%20and%20Family_zpshme5fxdy.png.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459722040i/18647460._SX540_.png" alt="Marceline and Family photo Marceline and Family_zpshme5fxdy.png" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> Marceline Loridan-Ivens (Marceline is front left, holding a ball) with her family at Bercq Plage, France- 1935 Later on, Marceline is sent to Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Anne Frank died, and then to a factory where junker planes are manufactured. She was finally liberated in the early summer of 1945. She never heard from his father again. Most Holocaust books I’ve read end with the liberation of survivors, something that is usually told in a solemn but uplifting narrative. One wishes to believe that suffering for the Jews ended with Germany's defeat. The last image one would like to keep out of World War II is one of people cheering, of allied soldiers being welcome as liberators and war tribunals serving justice to evil-doers. As we know, the story is much more complicated than that. As it often happens when people endured extreme traumatic experiences, survival leads to confusion and guilt. Holocaust survivors in particular came back to a world where people seemed hell-bent on putting the atrocities of Word War II behind. Marceline encountered this attitude not only from ordinary French citizens, but from her immediate family and from the Jewish community at large. About this she recalls: <blockquote> "...After the war, the obsession of the Jews to rebuild everything at all costs was intense, extreme—if you only knew. They wanted life to continue normally, as before, they went about it so quickly. They wanted weddings, even though people were missing from their photos because they hadn’t come back—weddings, couples, singing, and, soon, children, to fill the void. I was seventeen, no one even thought about sending me back to school and I didn’t have the strength to ask. I was a young woman, soon they’d marry me off." </blockquote> <a href="http://s1341.photobucket.com/user/irisper01/media/Camp_zpsvqtasbtx.png.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459722552i/18647501._SX540_.png" alt="Chimneys of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters photo Camp_zpsvqtasbtx.png" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> Chimneys of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/28329263.But_You_Did_Not_Come_Back_A_Memoir" title="But You Did Not Come Back A Memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir</a> is as much the story of Marceline's horrific experiences at Birkenau, as it is about her challenges to readjust to an ordinary life after coming back to France. Marceline returns to an indifferent mother and a family that is willfully ignorant of the horrific experiences she went through. "You have to forget" her mother tells her, "She didn’t understand where I was coming back from, or didn’t want to.” Marceline's desperate yearning for the father she lost is no only the result of the natural mourning process, for her Solomon also represents the missing link between her life before and after Birkenau. She believes that somehow he could've helped made sense of it all. <blockquote> "...There would have been two of us who knew" she tells her him,"Maybe we wouldn’t have talked about it often, but the stench, what we saw, the foul smells and the intensity of our emotions would have washed over us like waves, even in silence, and we could have divided our memories in two." </blockquote> Soon after the end of the war, Marceline got married to Francis Loridan a civil engineer, but the marriage deteriorated very quickly. In 1962, she felt in love and got married to Joris Ivens, a controversial Dutch cinematographer who was 30 years her senior. Neither one of her husbands were of Jewish ancestry, and she never wanted to have children. At 88, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/3106167.Marceline_Loridan_Ivens" title="Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">Marceline Loridan-Ivens</a> has lived a successful life. She became a writer, activist and documentary filmmaker, but the horrors of the concentration camps and her struggles to live a happy life have never left her. She is something of a controversial figure in France, a country with which by her own account, she has had a very complicated relationship. <a href="http://s1341.photobucket.com/user/irisper01/media/Et%20tu%20nes%20pas%20revenu_zps0tidqhgm.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459723211i/18647538._SY540_.jpg" alt="French Edition photo Et tu nes pas revenu_zps0tidqhgm.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> "Et tu n'est pas revenu"- French Cover On an interview I recently read, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/3106167.Marceline_Loridan_Ivens" title="Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">Marceline Loridan-Ivens</a> was asked why she had decided to write her memoir now, she said that even before the terrorist attacks in Paris, she was already alarmed and dismayed by the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe. “I see policemen outside of synagogues but I do not want to be someone who needs protection,” she declared. But “I’m often afraid because I know what’s happening.” Last year marked the 70 year anniversary since the Soviets liberated the Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland, but reading Loridan-Ivens account you feel as if that event only took place a little while ago. <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/28329263.But_You_Did_Not_Come_Back_A_Memoir" title="But You Did Not Come Back A Memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens" rel="noopener">But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir</a> is that vivid and emotionally raw. With its unsparing, bleak prose, this memoir will probably break your heart, so why should you even consider reading it? I would say if for no other reason, just because it’s gorgeously written, brutally honest and deeply touching. But there is also this: 6,000,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. 76,500 French Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 2,500 came back. 160 of them are still living. Marceline is just one of them. We are running out of survivors. Her story needs to be heard because sadly, it's remains very much relevant.

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Dem

March 22 2016

3.5 Stars " You might come back because you're young, but I will not come back" Marceline Loridan's father to her in 1944. This is a moving Novella written in the style of a letter from a daugher to her father. Marceline and her father were both taken to concentration camps and separated and she survived to tell her story. This short book is very well written and I love how it centers around a letter Marceline receives while in the camp from her father and how years later she has no recollection of what was in that letter but she uses this book to reply to her father's letter and in doing so gives us a glimpse of what her life was like while in the camp and her struggles with life when she returns to her family I have read a great deal of books relating to this period of history and I always find something new and interesting in each book I read. I listened to this on on audio and the narrator was very good.

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Dianne

November 04 2017

I feel strange rating this; it somehow doesn't feel right to assign stars to a first-hand account of someone's pain and trauma. This slim volume is an unflinchingly honest and anguished love letter to the author's father who died in the Holocaust. It's also her truth on not only what it was like to endure the holocaust herself, but to survive it. You can never, ever be the same, and Loridan-Ivens doesn't sugarcoat it. I love stories that make me think and bury themselves in my heart. Loridan-Ivens reminds us that anti-Semitism, hatred and intolerance still surround us. It's a heavy-hearted realization but that's why books like this are important and must be read - lest we forget how close we are to the razor's edge, how vigilant and observant we need to be to keep history's horrors from repeating themselves. It never ceases to amaze me, no matter how many of these accounts I read, how incredibly stupid and viciously brutal the human race can be.

But You Did Not Come Back

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