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by Sandell Morse (Author)
April 2020 will mark the 80th Anniversary of the fall of France to Nazi Germany, and the establishment of the provisional government of the Vichy state, a puppet of the Axis regime, to carry out the arrest and deportation of all Jewish civilians. In the course of her writing residency over a three-year period in the village of Auvillar, the author learns of acts of bravery and rebellion on the part of several of the Jewish families and individuals who risked their lives to save innocent refugees and children orphaned by the Holocaust, and gradually gains their trust enough for them to share the details of their harrowing experiences of rebellion and resistance. The author in turn discovers truths about her own life and Jewish heritage in America, which she now sees in the light of the bravery and selflessness of those who elected to act and not stand by idly in the face of oppression and genocide.
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In this haunting memoir that reflects on the Holocaust and its legacy, award-winning author Sandell Morse discovers stories of bravery and resistance enacted during WWII in southern France. In the course of six years at a writing residency in France, during which she met with survivors and historians, she painstakingly pieces together the puzzle that had been beguiling her over the years: what was the real story of the French Jews under the Vichy government during the Second World War?
Driven by her dogged curiosity and determination to uncover the truth, and with a fossilized shell she'd found in the wall of the Jewish quarter in Paris as a talisman, she seeks deeper meaning and understanding of her own Jewish heritage.
By gradually gaining the trust of those she interviewed, Sandell reconstructs incidents of the civilians' extraordinary courage in resisting the Vichy regime and Nazi occupation.
From the survivors' harrowing tales of escape, ingenious subterfuge, and just plain luck, she learns of a nunnery that was a safe-house for refugees; a rabbi who gave his life to save hundreds of Jewish children; the local gendarme who, endangering his own life, tipped the Resistance off to the upcoming Nazi roundups.
In this year that marks the 80th anniversary of the deportation of thousands of French Jews to Auschwitz, this memoir reflects on a crucial time in our world's history that still reverberates today and provides a moving tribute to those who resisted oppression and fascism.Author Biography
Sandell Morse is a non-fiction writer whose works have appeared in several major literary magazines, including Ascent, Ploughshares, and Solstice. She has received a Notable Mention in the Best American Essays 2013, and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives in Maine.
