Customer Reviews

Love in the Tempest of History: A French Resistance Story

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author is the daughter of two French resistance figures of World War II. Her father was a French naval captain who divorced at mid age and married a young Polish Jew living in Paris. When the French gave up and signed an armistice, this captain wanted to fight on and joined the Resistance. Rather than escaping to London where he could have served in the Free French Navy as a high officer, he serves as a resistance figure and climbs to the head of a cell. He is then tortured and shot with his wife just before the liberation of much of France. It is a sad tale.
This is a short book, and as the previous reviewer notes, makes these heroes come to light with all their positive and negative characteristics. I feel I was reading something very personal when I read this book. Since the original book was in French, perhaps the translator did not do a great job in the translation. This is why I rated it only three stars. Also, a more detailed description of the aftermath could have been done describing how the daughter was adopted by her uncle and what happened to the Leitner family children.

Let's get a couple of things straight.

1) Little of the story has to do directly with the French Resistance.

2) This is still a vital, interesting and perhaps even historically important work.

Ms. Yung-de-Prevaux, in a notable work of journalistic digging, resurrected her deceased parents in a monument to their heroism during the war.

Through her work, they live and breathe again as people, not dusty historic figures, but people with desires, wants, frustrations and faults, who, seeing their country overrun by barbarians, chose to fight and die together rather than submit to their conquest.

Their actions in organizing and operating a major resistance information-gathering cell covering the Mediterranean coast, undoubtedly saved the lives of thousands of troops and helped with the eventual liberation of Europe.

Tragically, Aude never new her parents except through her research, and equally tragically they were executed mere days from liberation.

This book is the account of their lives, and, as such, is better documented for the period before the war--but then, so much of what was done by resistance and special forces has never and probably never will come to light, having been taken to the grave by those heroes who performed these actions.

What we are left with, is a picture of these two very human people, their lives before the war and how these fairly ordinary extraordinary people came to make the choices they did to risk (and lose) everything for the sake of others.

Like so many heroes, they died mostly unknown by and unappreciated by those for whom they died. Thanks to their daughter, their worth is now more publicly known.