Ravensbrück: The Women's Camp of Death

By Denise Dufournier

First UK edition, first impression: London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1948. Translated from the French by F. W. McPherson.

Original dark blue cloth, the spine and upper board lettered in red. Printed slip identifying the French original and translator pasted to the verso of the title page. In the original unclipped pictorial dust jacket designed by Gordon Noel Fish, retaining the published price of 8s. 6d. net on the front flap.

Previous owner’s initials and surname to the front pastedown; some browning and spotting to the endpapers and top edge, the contents otherwise clean throughout. Some marking to the lower board and discolouration to the lower outer corners of both boards; the corners a little knocked.

The dust jacket with some loss to the foot of the spine and upper corner of the rear panel, further tears and chipping, and fraying along the folds.

An early published account of Ravensbrück, first issued by Hachette in Paris in 1945 as La Maison des mortes, with a preface by Maurice Schumann, the Free French spokesman on the BBC. Dufournier, a French lawyer and Resistance worker, was arrested in 1943 and imprisoned at Fresnes and Compiègne before her deportation to Ravensbrück in January 1944.

Published in the immediate aftermath of the war, her testimony records the experiences of women imprisoned in the camp. The dedication reads: “To France. To all my companions of Ravensbrück who died in her service”. The jacket presents the book as an account written to acquaint the outside world with both the courage and the brutality she had witnessed, drawing attention to a camp whose history remained comparatively little known to British readers. A rare edition in the dust jacket.