Friendship in the Face of Atrocity: Suzanne and Simone's Story from Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück: A Concentration Camp for Women

• 📌 Ravensbrück was Hitler's concentration camp specifically for women, located north of Berlin.
• 🌍 Over 120,000 women and children passed through Ravensbrück during WWII, with approximately 8,000 women deported from France, many of whom were resistance members.
• ⛓️ Prisoners endured appalling conditions, were used as slave labor to produce weapons, and a quarter of them did not survive.

Suzanne and Simone's Deportation

• 🇫🇷 Simone was a courageous resistance member from the Paris region, part of the Franco-British Sylvest Farmer Network.
• 👩‍🌾 Suzanne, from a wealthy family in Brittany, was arrested for providing first aid to resistance members during heavy fighting in the summer of 1944.
• 🤝 Both women formed a very strong friendship while in the camps, a common bond among prisoners in Ravensbrück and its satellite camps.

Liberation and Aftermath

• 🕊️ Ravensbrück was liberated by the Soviets on April 30th, 1945, but Suzanne and Simone had already been evacuated by the Nazis.
• 🇩🇪 The Germans evacuated many prisoners and destroyed archives in an attempt to cover up their crimes.
• 🇨🇿 Suzanne and Simone found themselves in Theresienstadt (Terezín), a former Jewish ghetto in Czechoslovakia, where they experienced liberation on May 8th, 1945, though both were seriously ill and far from home.

The Documentary "We'll Make It Home Together"

• 🎬 The documentary, produced by Claire Paccalin and Stéphanie Trouillard, tells the story of Suzanne and Simone's unbreakable bond and friendship.
• 💻 Available online on France 24's website, it combines archive footage with new footage filmed at the sites of the camps.
• ✨ The film explores the power of female friendships and resilience amidst the horrors of the Second World War.