A pro­found­ly mov­ing cel­e­bra­tion of love under the dark­est of cir­cum­stances. From the moment they met in 1940 in Ravens­brück 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 Ravens­brück, 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 Ravens­brück, because it was there I met Milena.”