Thread by @NTenzer

Today, as every year on April 30, I commemorate the liberation of the #Ravensbrück concentration camp—78 yrs ago.
On that day, my mother, who was there, was "celebrating" her 25th birthday.
I pay tribute to her today.
On that day, Hitler killed himself in his bunker.
#Thread
1/13

Mom was a member of the #Resistance in Belgium. She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 after her network was denounced. She went from prison to prison as a Nacht und Nebel political prisoner.
Her false papers concealed her Jewish origins.
Her last stop was #Ravensbruck.
2/13

When she was released, she was suffering from typhus and tuberculosis and weighed 30 kilos.
She was taken in by the Swedish Red Cross and gradually recovered in #Sweden.
Forever my gratitude to the wonderful persons who took care of her.
3/13

She was one of the first women to take the Belgian diplomatic examination in 1946, closed to women before WWII.
She continued her career in France, the UK & NYC before becoming an intl civil servant in 1968. She retired in 1985 & crossed the barrier of life on Aug. 31, 2001.
4/13

At that time, women in the diplomatic career could not marry. So Dad & Mom weren't (my father was married).
I was conceived in NYC when my mother was posted. It was complicated: think of the prejudice in the 1960s against single mothers and of the pressure she received..
5/13

Mom's colleagues either quit, stayed single, had affairs (but having a child was a choice Mom was the only one to make), or were Lesbian (a tribute to two of them who welcomed me to the US as a teen—I think Mom wanted me to find out that this was something "normal"...
6/13

..., which should be clear today, but was uncommon in the 1970s).
The feminist struggle back then was those first.
What my mother experienced in #Ravensbruck because of her fight for freedom also imposed freedom in life.
7/13

But I would especially like to come back to what she said to me about the #Resistance, which I sometimes quoted in my essays.
For her and her companions, she affirmed, there was a certainty: they were fighting against absolute #evil.
8/13

It was a battle between good and evil, life and death, the future or final destruction. There was no middle way, no holding back.
My mother used to tell me that she had seen this again in the face of mass crimes in #Srebrenica or #Rwanda.
She knew history can repeat itself.
9/13

As a Jew (but who insisted on saying that she had been arrested as a Resistance fighter), she perceived the absolute uniqueness of the #Holocaust, but at the same time she saw the permanence of #genocide and its recurrence in history.
10/13

In the ethnic cleansing in #Bosnia in particular, she told me she saw the same mechanisms at work.
Each historical moment is certainly specific, but the mechanics of mass crime are repeated. Holocaust denial also comes together.
11/13

Of course, I can't make her talk about the Russian war of extermination against Ukraine—after Syria.
But I know what her principles were.
I know what she thought about our strategic collapse before WWII.
I know she would have been uncompromising after the supreme crime.
12/13

And when #Ukraine is liberated and #Russia is finally down, I will celebrate in thought with her.
Over centuries and beyond death, a common and perpetual struggle.
13/13