【英语语言学习】逃离大屠杀的妇女

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

A lot of books come across our desks here at WEEKEND EDITION. One caught our eye recently because of the unusual way it came to be published. The title sums up the story. It's called "Underground In Berlin: A Young Woman's Extraordinary Tale Of Survival In The Heart Of Nazi¹ Germany." That extraordinary tale came to light thanks to a request by her son, historian Hermann Simon.

HERMANN SIMON: I once put a tape recorder and said to her, you always wanted to tell me the story of your life. Well, go ahead.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARIE JALOWICZ: (Speaking German).

MARTIN: And that is the voice of Marie Jalowicz Simon, one of the recordings² her son made near the end of her life. Here, she's describing a near miss she had with the Gestapo. It was June 22, 1942. Her father had just died after a long illness, leaving her, a 20-year-old Jewish woman, all alone in Berlin.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JALOWICZ: (Speaking German).

MARTIN: Marie Jalowicz watched as friends and family were hauled away to unknown destinations. When the Gestapo came for her, she was staying with a family friend. The officers ordered Marie to get ready to go. They said they had questions for her, that it wouldn't take long and that she'd be back in a couple of hours.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JALOWICZ: (Speaking German).

MARTIN: That was the kind of thing they always said to prevent people from falling into a fit of hysterics, she remembers, or swallowing a poison capsule or doing anything else that would've been inconvenient³ for the Gestapo. With the help of her friend, Marie fled.

SIMON: She thought it is only possible for her to survive not in her former neighborhood. It must be a place which is completely, for her, unknown.

MARTIN: So she wouldn't be recognized?

SIMON: Mhm.

MARTIN: Marie Jalowicz went underground, moving around the city to survive, staying with sympathetic Germans, whom Hermann Simon describes as on the fringe of society.

SIMON: Prostitutes, poor people, really outsiders, not the so-called normal people.

MARTIN: Some of them treated her decently. They chose to ignore the fact that Marie was a Jew and in exchange, she helped them - standing⁴ in lines for rations⁵ or cooking and cleaning. Others exploited her. She recounts, in matter-of-fact tone, how time and again she had to endure sexual assaults. Her son describes it as part of the price Marie paid for survival. And then, after Marie Jalowicz had spent three years living under an assumed name, surviving hunger and abuse and countless⁶ allied⁷ air raids, the war ended and the Russians rolled into Berlin.

SIMON: She once said to me, it was difficult to go underground, but it was also difficult to come out from the underground. Everything changed and she was alone. At the end, she was alone.

MARTIN: The house she'd grown up in had been razed⁸ to the ground. Friends and family members had been killed by the Nazis⁹. But Marie Jalowicz stayed in Germany after the war. She found and married her childhood friend, Heinrich Simon. She continued her studies and became a professor of literary cultural history at Humbolt University in Berlin, where she lived until her death in 1998.

1 Nazi   

n.纳粹分子，adj.纳粹党的，纳粹的

参考例句：

• They declare the Nazi regime overthrown and sue for peace.他们宣布纳粹政权已被推翻，并出面求和。
• Nazi closes those war criminals inside their concentration camp.纳粹把那些战犯关在他们的集中营里。

2 recordings   

n.记录( recording的名词复数 )；录音；录像；唱片

参考例句：

• a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
• old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐

3 inconvenient   

adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的

参考例句：

• You have come at a very inconvenient time.你来得最不适时。
• Will it be inconvenient for him to attend that meeting?他参加那次会议会不方便吗？

4 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

5 rations   

定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量

参考例句：

• They are provisioned with seven days' rations. 他们得到了7天的给养。
• The soldiers complained that they were getting short rations. 士兵们抱怨他们得到的配给不够数。

6 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

7 allied   

adj.协约国的；同盟国的

参考例句：

• Britain was allied with the United States many times in history.历史上英国曾多次与美国结盟。
• Allied forces sustained heavy losses in the first few weeks of the campaign.同盟国在最初几周内遭受了巨大的损失。

8 razed   

v.彻底摧毁，将…夷为平地( raze的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The village was razed to the ground . 这座村庄被夷为平地。
• Many villages were razed to the ground. 许多村子被夷为平地。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 Nazis   

n.（德国的）纳粹党员( Nazi的名词复数 )；纳粹主义

参考例句：

• The Nazis worked them over with gun butts. 纳粹分子用枪托毒打他们。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Nazis were responsible for the mass murder of Jews during World War Ⅱ. 纳粹必须为第二次世界大战中对犹太人的大屠杀负责。 来自《简明英汉词典》