Name: But You Did Not Come Back
ISBN: 9780802124500

Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Judith Perrignon

An activist and documentary filmmaker, who was arrested in occupied France at the age of fifteen, presents this deeply personal account of her experiences during the Holocaust and the death of her father in a concentration camp that overshadowed her whole life.

But You Did Not Come Back

Irene Alegre

This one earned its fourth star with its last section... beautifully written, honest and insightful.

Marceline Loridan

In 1944, at the age of fifteen, Marceline Loridan-Ivens was arrested in occupied France, along with her father. They were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and forcibly separated. Though he managed to smuggle one last note to her, Marceline never spoke to her father again. But You Did Not Come Back is Marceline's letter to the father she would never know as an adult. This is a breath-taking memoir by an extraordinary woman, and a deeply moving message from a daughter to a father.

Grace Gloria McCubbin

a quick but heartbreaking read. so well done. would really recommend

Chris G

I need to come back and really write everything for this book but I devoured it in a single session on a flight and awkwardly sobbed as the person next to me kindly passed me a tissue.
This is more than a letter to a father that long passed away, it is an aching look at the life of a Holocaust survivor, the change in their life, and how they view the world after the war.
Nonchalantly mentioning events in Birkenau while flitting between the profound life she led after the war only serves to make it even more heartbreaking as I quickly realised what I call 'normal' is not even close to the same meaning for Marceline.

“You might come back, because you’re young, but I will not come back.”—Marceline Loridan’s father to her, 1944 A runaway bestseller in France, But You Did Not Come Back has already been the subject of a French media storm and hailed as an important new addition to the library of books dealing with the Holocaust. It is the profoundly moving and poetic memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, who at the age of fifteen was arrested in occupied France, along with her father. Later, in the camps, he managed to smuggle a note to her, a sign of life that made all the difference to Marceline—but he died in the Holocaust, while Marceline survived. In But You Did Not Come Back, Marceline writes back to her father, the man whose death overshadowed her whole life. Although her grief never diminished in its intensity, Marceline ultimately found her calling, working as both an activist and a documentary filmmaker. But now, as France and Europe in general faces growing anti-Semitism, Marceline feels pessimistic about the future. Her testimony is a memorial, a confrontation, and a deeply affecting personal story of a woman whose life was shattered and never totally rebuilt.

But You Did Not Come Back

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