Agents for Escape: Inside the French Resistance, 1939-1945 [Hardcover]

Andre Rougeyron (Author), Marie-Antoinett McConnell (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Privately published in France in 1947, this memoir by a self-effacing resistance hero offers continuous suspense and excitement. Rougeyron, an auto engineer living in Normandy, risked his life throughout the war rescuing downed Allied airmen, supplying them with clothes and identity papers and launching them down the underground escape pipeline. Caught by the Gestapo in 1944, he was charged with Feindsbegunstigung (abetting the enemy) and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. With verve and even humor, he tells the story of his struggle to survive and his spectacular escape during the camp's evacuation. Wearing prisoners' striped pajamas, his head shaven, unable to speak German and ignorant of local topography, he managed to evade capture and starvation until he made contact with advancing British troops. Rougeyron's jaunty narrative voice and powers of description add a fresh perspective on the resistance in Normandy at the time of the D-Day landings and on conditions at Buchenwald during the final months of WWII. He died in 1967 at the age of 68. Illustrated.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Both of these works join a growing body of literature on the French Resistance (see, for example, Claire Chevrillon's Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance, LJ 5/1/95). Rougeyron's memoir, first published privately in 1947, recounts his experiences rescuing downed Allied airmen in France during the war years. An auto engineer and experimental race car driver before the war, he joined the Resistance after the Nazi occupation and organized a network of resisters who rescued, sheltered, and assisted British and American flyers. Rougeyron's memoir is translated by the wife of the first Allied airman whose escape he facilitated. In marked contrast to Rougeyron's personal story is Weitz's scholarly account, the first to research women's roles in the Resistance in a thorough and comprehensive way. In addition to utilizing the limited archival information available, Weitz (humanities and modern languages, Suffolk Univ.) has relied on interviews with more than 70 survivors of the Resistance, primarily women. Weitz places their dangerous and in many ways nontraditional activities against the backdrop of the Vichy regime's antifeminism and stresses the opportunities afforded by the Resistance for women both to change roles and to assume new roles in French society. She painstakingly demonstrates that women's presence in the Resistance was much greater than was believed or known at the time. Both works are recommended for specialists in the field.?Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807120197
• ISBN-13: 978-0807120194
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,274,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Antoinette, Marie

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique material, November 4, 2001

By 

B. Barrett (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Agents for Escape: Inside the French Resistance, 1939-1945 (Hardcover)

This eye witness account delivers a great true story. The main theme of the book is doing underground operations while having constant above board dealings with the enemy. The writing style is very readable, although I got lost a little when references were made to various towns.

It starts with Andre being in manufacturing in support of the war effort, and a description of the German invasion as seen locally. There was a German anti-aircraft installation near where he lived which shot down several Allied planes throughout the war. Andre gets involved with the Underground when he decides to harbor some evading airmen. This involvement was not thrust upon him, he seeked it out. As his activities became known to people in the area, many of whom were sympathetic to the Allies, he became more involved with harboring downed airmen. He also became involved with the Passive Defense, an above ground French organization that did what they could to fight fires, discourage French and German looters, etc. While patrolling the town for the Passive Defense, they would simultaneously participate in Resistance functions like putting nails on the road at night to sabotage German vehicles and removing the nails in the morning. The looting and sabotage intensified during the chaos of the Allied Normandy invasion. The most violent thing he did in the book was to set a German truck on fire. I get the feeling that Andre may have participated in some violent acts but did not include them in the book.

In 1944 he was fingered by informers and arrested by the Gestapo, who beat him up very badly. The Gestapo gathered up other suspected Resistance members, and sent them together to the Buchenwald concentration camp. He and another prisoner were able to escape during a bomb raid while being transfered to another camp, and after a couple of weeks made contact with the Allied front.

I wish there had been more follow up on what became of the participants in the book after the war, and especially what became of the informants and collaborators. Maybe a later edition could add an appendix dealing with this.