Sarah Helm

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Sarah Helm


Born
in The United Kingdom
November 02, 1952

Genre


Sarah Helm (born 2 November 1956) is a British journalist and non-fiction writer. She worked for The Sunday Times and The Independent in the 1980s and 1990s. Her first book A Life in Secrets, detailing the life of the secret agent Vera Atkins, was published in 2005.

Average rating: 4.31 · 6,651 ratings · 1,009 reviews · 5 distinct worksSimilar authors
Ravensbrück: Life and Death...

4.40 avg rating — 4,665 ratings — published 2015 — 43 editions
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A Life in Secrets: Vera Atk...

4.09 avg rating — 1,983 ratings — published 2005 — 22 editions
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The Aftermath: A correspond...

3.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2015
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The Odysseys

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
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Loyalty

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More books by Sarah Helm…
Quotes by Sarah Helm  (?)
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“I wish I could be built so that stupidity and dullness wouldn't bother me as much, but I just can't help it. It may sound paradoxical, but with time one wishes to be a hermit instead of always being around people. - Doctor Doris Maza”
Sarah Helm, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

“Most are pious, but with a peculiar sort of piety. They seem to me to be hiding behind God in disgust at their own meanness.”
Sarah Helm, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

“From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease. 
Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered. 
The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials. 
As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.”
Sarah Helm, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

Polls

March BoTM Nominations ~ Book About Women's History ~ 1st Poll
Top 5 books will move to Final Poll

 
  11 votes, 20.8%

 
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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics posts views last activity  
Reading Along Wit...: Sarah Helm: “Ravensbruck: Life And Death In Hitler’s Concentration Camp For Women” 1 16 Apr 08, 2015 06:06AM  
Non Fiction Book ...: Book of the Month Suggestions ~ 2015 22 10 Dec 03, 2015 01:02PM  
2024 Reading Chal...: Let's Turn Pages Challenge - 2015 2325 1541 Jan 03, 2016 11:49AM  
2024 Reading Chal...: #readwomen - 2015 994 1153 Jan 05, 2016 03:37PM  
2024 Reading Chal...: Jessica's 250 Books in 2016 201 285 Dec 31, 2016 10:21AM  
All About Books: Tweedledum's 2018 reading plan 24 21 Jan 01, 2018 04:35AM  
All About Books: This topic has been closed to new comments. March 2019 Readathon 60 59 Apr 05, 2019 04:40AM  


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