During her brief time as a girl scout, Denise Vernay, Simone Veil’s sister, acquired a nickname, Miarka. That was the pseudo she chose when she entered the Resistance. In this book, we follow her to Lyon during the winter of 1943-1944. Skulking through the maze-like city to avoid capture. Suffering terrible but vital loneliness. Getting arrested. The bathtub torture inflicted on a 20-year-old woman who still wouldn’t speak.

Once she arrived in Ravensbrück, where she was one of the youngest deportees, she, Germaine Tillion, Geneviève de Gaulle, and Anise Postel-Vinay became inseparable friends. Only two of the women survived.

Antoine de Meaux was 27 when he met Denise Vernay. At the time, she was the secretary for the Foundation for the Memory of Deportation. Drawing on little-known or previously unpublished archives, he offers us a portrait of an exceptional woman, as well as some of her family’s story. With this insightful, inspired and inspiring narrative, he contributes to Holocaust remembrance, at a time when hatred is gaining ground.

Denise Vernay was Simone Veil’s sister. Arrested in 1944 for acts of Resistance, she was tortured by the Gestapo before being deported to Ravensbrück. Using previously unpublished archives, Antoine de Meaux describes her path through the war: the bond with her sister, the clandestine missions, and the horrors of the concentration camps.