Days and Memory

Charlotte Delbo, a non-Jew sent to Auschwitz for being a member of the French resistance movement, recalls the poems, vignettes, and meditations that fed her companions' spirits, interweaving her experiences with the sufferings of others and depicting dignity and decency in the face of inhumanity.

""A collection of moving, chiseled prose narratives."" -- Kirkus Reviews
|""Delbo's book ranks among the best of the literature of the Holocaust."" -- Booklist


Charlotte Delbo was traveling in South America when she learned of the fall of France to the Nazis. Upon returning home, she and her husband were imprisoned by the Gestapo. After the murder of her husband, Delbo was held for nine months before being deported to Auschwitz in January 1943. She was in her seventies when she died in 1985. Days and Memory , published posthumously, appeared as La mémoire et les jours later that same year.