But You Did Not Come Back
By (Author) Marceline Loridan-Ivens
Translated by Sandra Smith
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
25th January 2017
29th December 2016
Main
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Social and cultural history
Biography: general
Gender studies: women and girls
Memoirs
The Holocaust
Second World War
940.5318092
Paperback
112
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 7mm
95g
Marceline Loridan-Ivens was just fifteen when she and her father were arrested and sent to concentration camps. He prepared her for the worst, telling her that he would not return. The three kilometres between her father in Auschwitz and herself in Birkenau were an insurmountable distance, and yet he managed to send her a small note via an electrician in the camp - a sign of life.
In But You Did Not Come Back, Marceline writes a letter to the father she would never know as an adult, to the man whose death enveloped her whole life. Her testimony is a haunting and challenging reminder of one of the worst crimes humanity has ever seen, and an affecting personal story of a woman whose life was shattered and never totally rebuilt.
Marceline Loridan-Ivens was born in 1928. She has worked as an actress, a screenwriter, and a director. She directed The Birch-Tree Meadow in 2003, starring Anouk Aimee, as well as several documentaries with Joris Ivens. Now 87 years old, she lives in Paris.