Milena and Margarete

Name: Milena and Margarete
Brand: Bonnier Books UK
Price: 83.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

A Love Story in Ravensbruck: The Nazi's Concentration Camp for Women

Author: Gwen Strauss

Narrated by: Unknown

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Format
Digital Audiobook

Available: 7th August 2025

Digital Audiobook

$83.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $21.00 with

Available: 7th August 2025

Preorder. Download available after release.

A profoundly moving celebration of love under the darkest of circumstances

From the moment they met in 1940 in Ravensbruck concentration camp, Milena Jesenska and Margarete Buber-Neumann were inseparable. Czech Milena was Kafka's first translator and epistolary lover, and a journalist opposed to fascism. A non-conformist, bi-sexual feminist, she was way ahead of her time. With the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, her home became a central meeting place for Jewish refugees. German Margarete, born to a middle-class family, married the son of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. But soon swept up in the fervor of the Bolshevik Revolution, she met her second partner, the Communist Heinz Neumann. Called to Moscow for his "political deviations," he fell victim to Stalin's purges while Margarete was exiled to the hell of the Soviet gulag. Two years later, traded by Stalin to Hitler, she ended up outside Berlin in Ravensbruck, the only concentration camp built for women.

Milena and Margarete loved each other at the risk of their lives. But in the post-war survivors' accounts, lesbians were stigmatized, and survivors kept silent. This book explores those silences, and finally celebrates two strong women who never gave up and continue to inspire. As Margaret wrote: "I was thankful for having been sent to Ravensbruck, because it was there I met Milena."