None of Us Will Return: Auschwitz and After is a memoir by French playwright Charlotte Delvaux, who was arrested for anti-Nazi activities during World War II and imprisoned in the death camp Auschwitz.
The hellish experience and the subsequent lives of the female resistance fighters who participated are described in an experimental format.


There were 230 French women on the train to Auschwitz that Delvaux was on, and only 49 of them returned alive after the war.
After his return in 1945, he wrote a three-volume series, "Auschwitz and After," spanning 25 years, encompassing his own memories and the testimonies of survivors.

This memoir, which reveals the truth about Auschwitz through the collective memory of women, became the foundation for Delvaux's work, which focused on the issues of existence, knowledge, and language throughout her life.
It has been praised for creating a place for women in a history written in capital letters by state power and male voices, and its philosophical and political values ​​have been consistently reinterpreted across time.

In the Korean edition, the three books that were originally separate volumes were combined, and the title of Part 1, "None of Us Will Return," was used as the title of the entire book.

“Look at that, look at that.” At first, you doubt what you saw.
It is clearly distinguished from white snow.
It's in the middle of the yard.
Naked bodies.
They are lined up facing each other.
It's brand new.
It is a white color with a slightly bluish tint that is located above the eyes.
The head was completely shaved, and the hair on the pubic area stood up stiffly.
The corpses are frozen.
White, but the nails are brown.
The toes pointing up are a bit funny.
So absurd and horrific.
(...)

Now the mannequins are lying in the snow.
Soaked in the winter sun.
This sunlight reminds me of the sun on asphalt.


The mannequins lying in the snow are yesterday's classmates.
They were there yesterday, during roll call.
They stood in groups of five on either side of Lagerstrasse.
They set off for the workshop and headed towards the wetlands.
Yesterday they were hungry.
I scratched my body because I had teeth.
Yesterday they drank dirty soup.
They had diarrhea and were beaten.
Yesterday they were in pain.
Yesterday they wished to die.


Now they are here, naked corpses in the snow.
They are dead in block 25.
Death in Block 25 has neither the quiet nor the peace that is usually expected from death.

---From "Mannequin"

The eyes flash like sparks in the refracted light.
There is no spreading light, only the hard, cold light of ice.
Everything is carved with sharp outlines, as if it were cut off.
The sky is blue, solid, and frozen.
Plants trapped in glaciers come to mind.
This is something that could only happen in the Arctic, where glaciers freeze even underwater plants.
We are trapped in a block of ice like those plants.
In the ice, which is hard, sharp as if cut, and transparent, almost like crystal.
And light penetrates this crystal.
As if the light were frozen in the ice, or as if the ice itself were light.
It was only after a while that we realized that we could still move through this iceberg.
We wiggle our toes in our shoes and roll our feet on the floor.
Fifteen thousand women are stamping their feet, but there is no sound.
We are in an environment where time has been wasted.
In this ice, in this light, in these blindingly dazzling eyes, we cannot even tell whether we are there or not, this ice, this light, this silence.

---From "The Next Day"

I am again overcome with despair.
“How are we going to get out of here?”

Lully looks at me.
Smile at me.
Her hand touches mine gently, trying to comfort me.
And I repeat to her:
Please let her know that this is all for nothing.
“I clearly told you.
I can't do it today.
This time it's real."

Lully looks around us.
After making sure that no Capo is nearby, he grabs my wrist and says:
“Come behind me so I can’t see you.
“You can cry now,” she says shyly, in a low voice.
I'm sure he said this because he needed to hear it from me.
That's understandable, because if it's such kind encouragement, I'll follow it without hesitation.
I set my extension on the floor, lean on the handle, and cry.
I didn't want to cry.
But tears leak out and flow down my cheeks.
I let the tears flow.
And when a teardrop wets my lips, I feel a salty taste.
I keep crying.


Lully sees the net while working.
Every now and then she turns her body back and gently wipes my face with her sleeve.
I cry.
I don't think about anything anymore.


I cry.


When Lully pulled me, I no longer knew why I was crying.
“It’s done now.
Okay, let's get to work.
“Look, it’s okay now.” I wasn’t ashamed at all that I cried at such kind words.
It felt like I was crying in my mother's arms.

---From "Ryulyu"

You would have thought that only solemn words would come from the lips of the dying.
(...) Almost all of our comrades, lying naked on the shabby stretcher, said this.


“This time I’m going to die.”

They were naked on bare planks.

They were dirty, and the planks were dirty with diarrhea and lice.

They probably didn't know how hard this was.
The survivors are supposed to convey their last words to their parents.
Parents must have expected something grand.
I can't let them down.
Vulgar language would never be appropriate in an anthology of last words.


But I couldn't allow myself to become weak.

So they said this.
“This time, I’m going to die.” That was so as not to take away the courage of others.


They didn't leave anything that could be a message, because they thought not a single one would survive.

---From "You must have thought so"

At first, we wanted to sing.
You can't even imagine.
How my heart was torn to pieces by those frail voices repeating words that were now inconceivable, words that were shattered and weak in the swamp.
The dead do not sing.


...they started acting as soon as they came back to life.
(...)
It was amazing.
Some lines from Molière that were still fresh in our memories came rushing back.
He was brought back to life completely by some inexplicable magical power.


It was amazing.
Because everyone acted with sincerity, without trying to stand out, and with humility.
The miracle of actors without vanity.
A miracle for the audience, who suddenly regain their childhood innocence and revive their imagination.


It was amazing.
Because during those two hours, even as the smoke of human flesh billowed from the chimney, we believed more in the world we were acting in.


That belief was stronger than the belief in freedom, the only freedom we believed in at the time, the very freedom for which we had to fight for another 500 days.

---From "At first, I wanted to sing"

Each person took their own memories with them.
All that weight of memory, all that weight of the past.
When I arrived, I had to put all that weight down.
I had to take everything off and go in.
One might say that even if everything is taken away from a human, memories are the only exception.
But that's something you say without knowing anything.
Once you remove the attributes of human existence from a human being, their memories also disappear.
Memories fall off piece by piece, like burnt skin.
You will never understand how it is possible to survive so naked.
This is what I can't explain to you.
In the end, a few people survived like that.
People call things that cannot be explained a miracle.
The survivors had to regain their memories.
He had to get back what he once owned.
His knowledge, his experience, his childhood memories, his dexterity, his intellectual capacity, his sensitivity, his ability to dream, to imagine, to laugh.
If you can't fathom the effort he put into it, then no matter how hard I try to make you understand it, it won't work.

---From "Gilberte"

I held her cold hand tightly, tormented by self-reproach.
Dear Germain, you have helped me so much.
When I was frozen, you warmed me up.
You lent me your hand so I could finally fall asleep.
And yet I haven't had time to come see you, talk to you, see how you're building your life again—but you know, it took me a long time.
After that...
Yeah, even after I have time—I didn't come here to tell you what I owe you.
Just because I came back from there, because they didn't say these things there, I came.
(...)

You shouldn't feel ashamed.
You shouldn't feel regret.
What's the point of all that? It wasn't Sylvian who came back with us, it was Germain.
Was it yesterday or the day before, anyway, these days, since Sylvian is already dead, in the last few days, because Sylvian hasn't changed.
She, Germain, still has her generous lips, her blue-shining eyes, and the kindness and affection in them.
Germain's hand was still in my hand.
Even while sick, her hands were soft and plump, not thin, and I was holding her hands that had lost no flesh and had simply become transparent.
I was holding Germain's hand, unable to decide to leave, just as I had been there every night, unable to let go of my mother's hand, to fall asleep.

---From "The Death of Germain"

and
These are the stories of those who returned.
It would be better not to believe it.
These returning ghosts
I can't even explain how it happened
If you believe in these returning ghosts
You may never be able to sleep forever.

---From "A Prayer for the Living, To Forgive the Living"