Talk:Auschwitz and After

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The main article on Charlotte Delbo says that she wrote this work almost immediately after the war, but refrained from publishing it until the 1960s "for political reasons". It'd be helpful if someone could elaborate on what those were, or in general just document the publication history. --Delirium 08:02, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Supposedly (this is somewhere on the web, but I'm not sure it's necessarily a reliable source) since the book depicts the heroic struggles of a number of her fellow (then, at least) Communists. With the Cold War underway, France was sort of downplaying the leading role played by many Communists in the resistance. Only when that had faded, in the late 1960s, did she feel she could publish it. Daniel Case 16:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Did a bit of searching, and the introduction by Lawrence L. Langer to the English translation (1995, Yale University Press) says: "she finished the first volume ... in 1946 but put it away in a drawer and did not let it be published until 1965, when, as she said, it had stood the test of time." Kind of a vague explanation, so there might've been political reasons, but it sounds like Delbo herself never explicitly said so. --Delirium 19:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]