Rose under fire
– Elizabeth Wein
World War 2 was absolutely a
‘world’ war because of how it affected such a vast number of countries and
people. I find that growing up in the British Commonwealth; I have
understandably known much more about the British viewpoint and how it affected
the British and Australian forces. World War Two caused many different
reactions and consequences in other countries though and so to broaden my
perspective, for the next twelve weeks I am going to read twelve books that
focus on some different parts and attitudes of the war. I am going to be
focusing on the war in Europe rather than in Africa, the east or at sea because
it would already take me a life time to read through everything that has been
written about the European side of the war!
Book One - Twelve books about WW2
Rose Justice is an 18
year old American who has lived through most of World War Two in perfect comfort
and peace. In 1944 she decides to use her experience as a pilot to go to England and join the Air Transport Auxiliary which consists of female civilians who
transport aeroplanes from factories and between aerodromes. While the work has many
risks; flying in bad weather, landing on cracked runways and flying broken down aeroplanes to be fixed, Rose feels that her skills are wasted. Her father taught
her to fly when she was 12 years old and Rose already has more flying
experience then most of the male combat pilots. Rose eventually convinces her
uncle who is high ranking in the air force to allow her to transport him to his
station in newly allied occupied France. Everything is going well till on her
flight back to England when Rose stumbles on a flying bomb - Vergeltungswaffe 1. These were fairly
new bombs that travelled long distances before exploding, like our modern day
missile. Rose has heard rumours that these bombs can be rammed or even diffused
by just disturbing the air space around them. Without stopping to think she
turns her aeroplane and makes attempt after attempt to stop the bomb without blowing herself up. She is finally successful but her happiness turns to fear
as she realises that she has gone far off her route and is now lost over
countryside that is quite likely still in German control.
Concentration Camps were some of the worst places on earth, where people were
systematically dehumanised and then starved and worked to death. Jews were the
people who made up most of the inhabitants in concentration camps but they were
not alone. Sometimes forgotten are the Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs,
Ukrainians, Greeks, French, soldiers and civilians, religious minorities, social
outcasts and members of resistance movements, to name just a few were also
placed in these camps. Ravensbrck was a female camp with mainly French, Polish, Russian prisoners. Rose was aware of concentration camps before she arrived
at Ravensbruk but she had also viewed them sceptically and the horrible stories
that emerged from them were very often considered simply anti- German propaganda.
Rose didn’t believe it. That is until she arrived and met the Rabbits of
Ravensbrck. These rabbits were seventy four Polish girls and women who were
taken to Ravensbrck to be used as experiments. Their legs were cut open and
deliberately damaged and then inside their wounds would be placed gangrene or
bacteria and then everything would be bandaged in dirty linen. Their torturous wounds
were made to replicate those being received by the German troops so that the
doctors could experiment and observe the effects.
What is powerful about
this book is that it that the story does not stop when the survivors escape or
are released from Ravensbrck. It shows the near impossibility it was for the
survivors to pick up the pieces of their lives and carry on. Inside the camp the women had banded together and fought to help each other survive so that there
would be a time when someone could tell the world what had happened. However
once released, fear, guilt of being alive and emotional scarring made speaking
out difficult for many of them.
This novel covers very
dark and serious topics and while Rose is a fictional character, the seventy
four Rabbits were real women. The story, however is not completely black, instead it shows what happened when the women of
Ravensbrck refused to give up being human beings and worked together,
regardless of their different nationalities, to survive.
Because of the sacrifices of the women of Ravensbrck, sixty three rabbits survived the war to tell their stories.
“Izabela, Aniela,
Alicia, Eugenia,
Stefania, Rozalia,
Pelagia, Irena,
Alfreda, Apolonia,
Janina, Leonarda,
Czeslava, Stanislava,
Vladyslava, Barbara,
Veronika, Vaclava,
Bogumila, Anna,
Genovefa, Helena,
Jadviga, Joanna,
Kazimiera, Ursula,
Vojcziechz, Maria,
Wanda, Leokadia,
Krystyna, Zofia”
(A mnemonic counting-out rhyme that includes all the given names of the seventy four Polish women experimented on in Ravensbrck. Some of the women had similar first names or shared a name, in the poem each name is only listed once.)
