my leap to freedom ; fragments

In this book, Odette Spingarn gives us a first-hand account of the various camps of the «final solution» she passed through after being arrested with her parents in a village in Corrèze, France on 31 March 1944: the Périgueux barracks, Drancy transit camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp - where her mother died - one of its sub-camps, Kanada, where she sorted murdered deportees' clothing and, finally, the Zschopau campfactory in Saxony, Germany, to which she was moved in early October 1944.
As the Allies approached in April 1945, she and her fellow slave laborers, all of them women, were packed into boxcars bound for a death camp. Odette took her fate into her hands and jumped out of the train, embarking on a long odyssey that she describes in detail. In the end, a German woman saved her life.
Back in France, Odette's youth and unshakeable optimism enabled her to build a new life, study, have a career and start a family.