Marceline Loridan-Ivens (née Rozenberg; 19 March 1928 – 18 September 2018) was a French writer and film director. Her memoir ''But You Did Not Come Back'' details her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was married to Joris Ivens.
Biography
Marceline Rozenberg was born to Polish Jewish parents who emigrated to France since 1919. At the beginning of World War II, her family settled in
Vaucluse
Vaucluse (; oc, Vauclusa, label= Provençal or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
. She and her father, Szlama, were captured by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
Simone Veil
Simone Veil (; ; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a French magistrate and politician who served as Health Minister in several governments and was President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. ...
Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrati ...
, and eventually to
Theresienstadt
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination ca ...
. The camp was liberated on 10 May 1945. by the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
.
She married Francis Loridan, an engineer. Years later they divorced, but she was allowed to keep his surname.
She joined the
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Un ...
in 1955 and left it a year later. She then encountered "deviationists", such as
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of s ...
and
Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin (; ; born Edgar Nahoum; 8 July 1921) is a French philosopher and sociologist of the theory of information who has been recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought" ( pensée complexe), and for his scholarly contributio ...
, wrote manuscripts for intellectuals, worked in the reprographic service of a polling institute, was bag carrier for the
Algerian National Liberation Front
The National Liberation Front ( ar, جبهة التحرير الوطني ''Jabhatu l-Taḥrīri l-Waṭanī''; french: Front de libération nationale, FLN) is a nationalist political party in Algeria. It was the principal nationalist movement du ...
and frequented
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Saint-Germain-des-Prés () is one of the four administrative quarters of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France, located around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Its official borders are the River Seine on the no ...
Jacqueline Remy, "La vie est belle", '' Vanity Fair'', April 2018, pages 78–85.
In 1961,
Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin (; ; born Edgar Nahoum; 8 July 1921) is a French philosopher and sociologist of the theory of information who has been recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought" ( pensée complexe), and for his scholarly contributio ...
cast her in the film ''
Chronique d'un été
''Chronicle of a Summer'' (French original title: ''Chronique d'un été'') is a 1961 French documentary film shot during the summer of 1960 by sociologist Edgar Morin and anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch, with the technical and aesthetic ...
'', thus making her film debut. In 1963, she met and married the documentary director Joris Ivens. She assisted him in his work and co-directed some of his films, including '' 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War '' (1968). They left together for Vietnam, where they met
Ho Chi Minh
(: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as (' Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as P ...
.
From 1972 to 1976, during the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan worked in China and directed ''
How Yukong Moved the Mountains
''How Yukong Moved the Mountains'' (french: Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes) is a series of 12 documentary films directed by Marceline Loridan-Ivens and Joris Ivens about the Cultural Revolution. Ivens and his partner Loridan worked on t ...
'', a series of 12 films Criticized by
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing (19 March 191414 May 1991), also known as Madame Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary, actress, and major political figure during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). She was the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of ...
, they had to quickly leave China.
Loridan-Ivens gave lectures and testimonies in colleges and high schools on the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
How Yukong Moved the Mountains
''How Yukong Moved the Mountains'' (french: Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes) is a series of 12 documentary films directed by Marceline Loridan-Ivens and Joris Ivens about the Cultural Revolution. Ivens and his partner Loridan worked on t ...
'' – Documentary series co-directed with Joris Ivens
* 1976: '' Une histoire de ballon, lycée n° 31 Pékin'' – Short film (19 min) co-directed with Joris Ivens
* 1977: ''Les Kazaks'' – Documentary co-directed with Joris Ivens
* 1977: ''Les Ouigours'' – Documentary co-directed with Joris Ivens
* 1988: '' A Tale of the Wind'' – Documentary-fiction co-directed with Joris Ivens
* 2003: '' La Petite Prairie aux bouleaux''
As actress
* 1961: ''
Chronique d'un été
''Chronicle of a Summer'' (French original title: ''Chronique d'un été'') is a 1961 French documentary film shot during the summer of 1960 by sociologist Edgar Morin and anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch, with the technical and aesthetic ...
1977
Events January
* January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group.
* January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democrat ...
National Jewish Book Award
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.Joris Ivens, Paris, les Éditeurs français réunis, 1969 (44 illustrations)
* ''Ma vie balagan'', story written with journalist Élisabeth D. Inandiak,
Robert Laffont
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
, 2008
*''Et tu n'es pas revenu'', story written with Judith Perrignon, Grasset, 2015
* ''L'amour après'', story written with Judith Perrignon, Grasset, 2018, 162 p.
References
Sources
*
Serge Klarsfeld
Serge Klarsfeld (born 17 September 1935) is a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, he has made notab ...
, ''Le Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France'', Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, 1978; New Edition: Association des Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France (FFDJF), 2012