Doors to Madame Marie [Hardcover]

Odette Meyers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

This eloquent and spirited memoir of a young Jewish girl coming of age in Nazi-occupied France recounts her own family's difficult and brave survival and portrays as well the love and quiet heroism of her rescuers. The powerful central figure is Madame Marie Chotel, the Catholic concierge and seamstress who hides seven-year-old Odette and her mother in her broom closet while police search, who secures the child's safe haven in a distant province, and who is cherished by Odette, even in absentia, as her godmother and mentor. The story unfolds as a drama of many parts, told in a lyrical prose rich with flashes of humour and a startling perceptivity that takes nothing for granted. Odette is hidden during the occupation, a secret Jew in a remote and conservative Catholic village. Absorbed in the village's life, she becomes a fervent Catholic child.When she returns to Paris, she struggles over her Jewish identity and religion and her fierce nostalgia for the wild countryside, but she accepts again the secular Judaism of her working-class intellectual parents, immigrants from Poland who survived the war (though many relatives did not), her father as a French Army prisoner of war, her mother as a member of the Resistance. And she again finds Madame Marie, who tells her, simply, to look in her heart. The world can be confusing, maddening, and a whole city, a whole country can vanish from ones life but as long as Madame Marie sits at her sewing machine, everything can be made right again. The story does not close with the war's end and the departure of fourteen-year-old Odette and her parents for America. It continues with her search, many years later, for Madame Marie, and with the inscription of the name of Marie Chotel on the Wall of Righteous Gentiles at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C.This memoir is extraordinary not only for its broad historic sensibility but also for its fascinating portrait of wartime France from the unusual perspective of a Jew whose life was permitted to go on. Odette Meyers has taught French literature at the Claremont Colleges, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of California at Berkeley and she was a contributor to the award-winning film and book "The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust". She lives in Berkeley, California.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA. A lyrical memoir that describes life from early childhood to young womanhood in the years prior to and following World War II in Nazi-occupied France. Born to Jewish parents from Poland who had become working-class Parisians with an intellectual bent, Meyers tells her story with clear, poignant images. Readers meet Madame Marie, the Catholic concierge of her tiny apartment, who emerges as protector, mentor, and godmother. Unforgettable chapters describe Meyers's tender years as one of many children spirited away to the French countryside, pretending to be Catholic for safety's sake. The story concludes as the author returns years later to those same little villages, much changed, to exchange memories with those who provided sanctuary during such troubled years. There is a discernible evolution of focus as the writer takes readers from the egocentric world of her Parisian neighborhood, into the nationalistic world of a young adult, to her eventual emigration to the United States. Meyers's choice of details, her point of view, tone, and even syntax seem to mature as she shares her deeply moving story.?Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Inspired by her contribution to the award-winning film and book The Courage To Care (1986), Jewish-born Meyers tells how she survived in German-occupied France by posing as a Christian. Madame Marie, the Catholic concierge in her apartment building and her spiritual godmother, hid Odette and her mother from a police roundup, then placed the child with another Marie in a distant part of France. Although raised as a secular Jew, Meyers recounts her internal struggle with her attraction to Catholicism and her feelings of guilt over possibly betraying the religion of her father (who was in a POW camp) and her mother, who later joined her in hiding, posing as her unwed Catholic mother, Marie. This highly emotional memoir should appeal to general readers as well as those interested in Holocaust studies.?John A. Drobnicki, York Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 463 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr; 1St Edition edition (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295975768
• ISBN-13: 978-0295975764
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,779,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Giving hearts open doors, November 5, 2000

By 

L.Madeleine (Benicia, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doors to Madame Marie (Hardcover)

This book had a profound effect on me. I don't totally agree with the first review on this page. Possibly the reviewer should read the book again since he/she seemed to miss the pivotal message woven throughout this book like a fine golden thread in a tapestry.

The solid footing the author stood on was to keep your heart swept out of insiduous practices like racial and ethnic intolerances that lead to atrocities such as the Holocaust. "Dust doesn't announce itself." she says as she likens our hearts to the apartment house of the next century. Be courteous to one another, follow the Golden Rule, and put this book on your list of books to read. You won't be sorry you did.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doors to Madame Marie, June 29, 2010

By 

Theresa Gibbons - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Doors to Madame Marie (Hardcover)

The real life story of Odette Meyers as a young jewish girl hiding out in Nazi France and the French that did and did not help her and her family is spellbinding. For anyone who has spent anytime in France, you can feel, taste, smell, hear, and see - all in those written words what the 1940 era was like from someone who lived a rich and meaningful life. The former professor from Berkeley, CA has written an excellent book on many levels.