‘I have not spoken for hours, for months, and in fact for years from the sources of my real being […] My strength of recovery comes from that waiting within me […] How else would I have survived the many deaths I have died? (Margaret Michaelis, 1954) This paper will offer an extract from two of the ‘lives’ featured in the book I’m currently completing, After the wars in Spain: lives salvaged from the dark twentieth century.