Germaine Tillion

An uplifting experience last weekend: seeing the world premier of an operetta written in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Adding to the poignancy: the fact that the author, Germaine Tillion, is still alive and indeed has just celebrated her 100th birthday. The story is hard to beat. Germaine Tillion was a resistance member betrayed in '42 and sent to Ravensbruck a year later. In October 44, concealed by her comrades in a packing crate, she composed the operetta-revue which she called "Le Verfugbar aux Enfers". It means "The camp-worker goes to hell" -- Verfugbar being the German term for "available" workers, i.e. ones not assigned to major projects. The piece is certainly odd. It begins with a character called The Naturalist, who conducts a quasi-scientific analysis of the life-form that is the "Verfugbar". Behind him are a chorus of female slave-workers (Ravensbruck was almost exclusively for women) led by professional singers who break periodically into song. Tillion was no musician, so she resorted to snatches of popular tunes from pre-war days: operetta, chanson, even advertising jingles. To these she put words that mix burlesque with a very black humour. "Once we were known for our sex-appeal, now our batteries are well and truly dry," two inmates sing to the tune of Au Clair de la Lune. The operetta was never performed of course: it would have triggered a terrible punishment. But in the evenings Tillion would read out sections of her script to raise morale. It became a survival mechanism. In 1945 Tillion learned that her mother -- who was also at Ravensbruck -- had been killed in the camp gas-chamber. She herself managed to leave shortly before the end of the war. For years the script of "Verfugbar" lay hidden in a drawer. Tillion, who became a well-known ethnologist, feared that it would be misconstrued. How could she have written something "humorous" in a concentration camp? But now that it has been resurrected, it stands simply and movingly as a testament to the human spirit of endurance. Sadly Tillion was too frail to attend the performance at the Theatre du Chatelet, but the cast sang for her at her home in Paris. It must have been an extraordinary moment.