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Moving memoir of an anti-nazi survivor
Paul Simon reviews Gone to Ground by Marie Jalowicz Simon (Profile Books, £14.99)

Marie Jalowicz Simon was a “U-boat” — the name given to those enemies of the nazis, mainly Jews, who went underground rather than face the mechanised death of the concentration camps.

Her clear-eyed memoir, after a brief description of early childhood and family circumstances, moves on to her time as a forced labourer in the Spandau factory of the Siemens company.

Establishing a theme that runs throughout this extraordinary account, wonderfully translated by Anthea Bell, Simon recalls not only her own will to survive but the collective spirit of solidarity and resistance of those facing humiliation, exposure and death.

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