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And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance

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I found Jacques Lusseyran in 1969 when he became my teacher and advisor in the graduate program of French at the University of Hawaii. He also became one of my dearest friends. I lost him two short years later when he and his wife were killed on a lonely French country road in a car wreck. The terrible irony of having survived the Nazi occupation of France, as well as his betrayal, capture, torture and the final years in Buchenwald becomes self-evident as one reads this book. But more than the irony, this book portrays Jacques' great capacity for joy and hope and faith.
He taught me to have faith and hope, in God and in others, as well as in myself and in those gifts which each of us possess. I have shed many tears because I lost him. I loved him and his wife, both for what they taught me and what they gave me: joy in life and living; faith that even in the worst of human pain and suffering there is still always hope.
I have also shed many tears since then of gratitude for those two brief years of my life. And I continue our conversations about all things good and joyful through reading And There Was Light. Jacques Lusseyran and his life have changed my life and I rejoice and am grateful.

Harper Collins just came out with their list of the 100 best spiritual books of the 20th Century. Yes, another list, but this one intrigued me enough to want to sample the books on the list. And that is how Icame across this remarkable book. Jacques Lusseyran was blinded in an accident at the age of 8, yet was a major force in the French Resistance during World War II, was betrayed and spent time in a Concentration Camp.This is NOT anotherholocaust memoir. Insteadit is an odd, inspiring, beautifully and simply written story, detailinghow one man lived a full spiritual life despite blindness and the presence of great evil. Blindness was not a "handicap" to Lusseyran, instead he reacted to the world in amazing ways. It was a mysticism born out ofcircumstances, not theology. Few books can overwhelm the cynic in me.For a time, this one did.I have sent this book to friends and relatives, who were as surprised and moved as I was. And There Is Light may change you.

"in 1935 in a lycee in Paris..our work was divided into two equal parts: the world of today and the world of yesterday, the dreams of the ancients and the dreams of the modern man. I can't believe that was a bad thing. At least we were not in danger of falling into absurdity, so common nowadays, of confusing the era of Sputniks and Polaris rockets with the era of Genesis".

It is hard for me to categorize this book; it is a spiritual book, illuminating one man's relationship with the Spirit; it is a profound meditation on the nature of truth, morality and friendship, and it is a priceless analysis of human nature. Blindness was no impediment to Lusseyran - on the contrary, he learnt to use his senses with an uncanny precision to represent facts by creating visual imagery, to identify the motives that drive people and countries and to establish contact with the transcendental essence of all Being. "People were not at all what they were said to be, and never the same for more than two minutes at a stretch. Some were, of course, but that was a bad sign, a sign that they did not want to understand or be alive, that they were somehow caught in the glue of some indecent passion. ... It is strange that when laws men make are so ticklish in matters concerning the body, they never set limits to nakedness or contact by voice. Evidently they leave out of account the fact that the voice can go further than hands or eyes in licit or illicit touch."

This book is very valuable for its insights on the nature of blindness and sensory-emotional reorganization that accompanies it. "Blindness works like dope, a fact we have to reckon with. ...Like drugs, blindness heightens certain sensations, giving sudden and often disturbing sharpness to the senses of hearing and touch. But, most of all, like a drug, it develops inner as against outer experience, and sometimes to excess" (p.49).

I just cannot help myself from quoting from this book, it is so full of unforgettable passages. This is from the time he was caught, as a member of the Resistance, by the Gestapo: (p. 245): "One small piece of advice. IN a spot like this, do not go too far afield for help. Either it is right near you, in your heart, or it is nowhere. It is not a question of character, it is a question of reality. If you try to be strong, you will be weak. If you try to understand, you will go crazy. No, reality is not your charaqcter which, for its part, is only a by-product - I can't define it, a collection of elements. Reality is Here and Now. It is the life you are living in the moment. Don't be afraid to lose your soul there, for God is in it."

As you can see, this book was written by a remarkable man, who could "see" life and truth and humaneness better than many of his fellow men. Now, when our times in some ways resemble the late 30ies and we again seem to be descending into the darkness of ignorance, when the world is run by corrupt, greedy and cynical men who value their comfort above and beyond the dignity of their souls and happiness of their fellow men, Lusseyran's book provides a ray of light and a courage. I salute this amazing man.

'AND THERE WAS LIGHT:'
A REVIEW OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY JACQUES LUSSEYRAN,
BLIND HERO OF THE FRENCH RESISTANCE
by Penny Reeder
Imagine living in France during the 1930s. Imagine yourself as a high school student studying German, tuning across the radio dial and finding a live broadcast of Adolph Hitler, spewing forth an invective of hatred, vilifying enemies of the Reich, exhorting fellow Germans to recapture hegemony and to rid themselves and all of Europe of all their enemies. How chilling it would be to hear these rantings and the crowd's enthusiastic approving responses in real time. How frightening then to witness the surge of Hitler's armies, trampling on the civilization and heritage of one European people after another. How desperate it must have felt to furtively tune one's radio to the forbidden BBC broadcast of the fragmentary French government in exile, to understand that one's activities in opposition could lead to betrayal and capture at any moment. How desolate it must have felt to travel for days and nights, without heat, or water, or hope, in a cattle car packed with human beings destined for starvation, torture, forced labor, and death; and then to lose one's friends, one after another, while barely hanging onto life or hope during the long, tortured years of war.
I was taken to those times and those places as I read the words of Jacques Lusseyran, who refused to be indoctrinated or intimidated into silent acquiescence. I felt the chill he felt, experienced his premonitions of suffering, and as a reader of his personal account, was transported by his words which recalled the memories of one of the youngest members of the French Resistance. Lusseyran, at 16, led a movement of young French men and women who wrote, published, and distributed the underground newspapers which let ordinary men and women know what was happening in their occupied country and in the rest of the world; the papers contradicted the lies which were spread by the occupying powers, and these truths paved the way for the return of France's true patriots, the defeat of the Axis, and the triumph of a free France and, ultimately, a free world.
Information is power. Even a young boy of 16 knew it, and despite his youth, and a disability which prevented him from reading even a single printed word in the newspapers he and his compatriots published, despite a fear of dire consequences, and a premonition of the same, Jacques Lusseyran accepted the challenge of recruiting others to the resistance movement and of telling the truth about the Nazis in newspapers which at one point in those early years of French occupation were openly distributed by his courageous friends at the doors to cathedrals and on the cars of the Paris Metro.
Lusseyran and his friends paid dearly for their courage and their refusal to suffer the occupiers' invasion in silence. Lusseyran was one of the very few who survived, but his suffering was great. Nearly all his idealistic friends were killed, and he emerged, against all odds, from Buchenwald, where he endured most of the war years, with scarred body and spirit. You can read his story, conveyed in his own words, written to honor the memory of all who suffered and died, and to renew our faith in the courage of men and women who refuse to surrender to hatred or tyranny or malevolence, who believed in the light of truth and bravery and the triumph of the divine, in the pages of his biography, "And There Was Light," published by Parabola Books, and available on audiocassette from the same publisher.
Although many readers may be intrigued by Lusseyran's descriptions of how he became blind at the age of eight, how he and his family adapted to his disability, and the concept of a young man with a severe disability leading a movement of hundreds of able-bodied French citizens in their struggle against tyranny, it was not Lusseyran's descriptions of blindness or how he coped with a lack of sight that intrigued me. Rather, it was his descriptions of his commitment to truth, and to humanity, and to survival of the human spirit that kept me reading this book and continue to inspire me, on virtually a daily basis, weeks after I turned off my cassette player as the third tape came to an end.
We live in troubled times. Wouldn't it be easy to just separate ourselves from screaming headlines, fluctuating levels of terror, and hard questions about the rights of minorities, the advisability of going to war, the consequences of "more guns and less butter"? Why bother to vote in an election whose outcome seems pre-ordained by powers outside our control? With wars and rumors of wars, an uncertain economy, and real worries about which among us might be friend or foe, a person could be tempted into silent acquiescence when confronted by threats of retribution, or worse. Why bother to stand up for what is right in a corporation, or a community, or a nation or a world when what is right is called "wrong" by some of the people in charge?
Let Jacques Lusseyran remind all of us of the importance of standing up for truth, and morality, and the worthiness of human beings and democratic values. At this time of Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for heroes, like Jacques Lusseyran, who summoned the courage to fight against tyranny, and whose stories reaffirm for each of us who know about them, the value of staying involved in life even when the challenges seem insurmountable.
I thank the publishers of Lusseyran's memoir for sharing the audio version of his story with "The Braille Forum," and, without reservation, I recommend this excellent autobiography to every American, sighted and blind, as we confront our own daily struggles against fear, hopelessness, intolerance, or tyranny.
Order "And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance," which is available in print and on (two-track) audiotape...

This is a first and foremost, a book about life, _real_ life. Blunt, profound and absolutely inspiring, Lusseyran has written an exceptionally luminous account of living with and learning from adversity. While the content of this book is itself interesting, (WWII, the French resistance, blindness) the book's real value is the majestic picture of human potential it paints. Lusseyran guides us into the subtle depths of the human being and does so with a writing style that is neither cryptic nor patronizing. I have never been quite so moved by a book before.

I very much agree with the reviews expressed about this book. It is a story of courage and compassion and love and faith. I wholeheartedly recommend Andre Gregory's reading on the audio tapes. I have spent countless hours listening to these tapes, and undoubtedly I will spend countless more.

I stayed up all night reading this book, for the first time in years. Poetic, life affirming, from the heart.

This is an engrossing story of a man who was fully open to what is possible in life as well as a chronical of pre and war-time Europe, the Resistance, and a different view of concentration camp life. I am in awe at Lusseyran's energy for life and the richness of his experience, and I'm encouraged by the endless possibilities of what life can hold simply by being open to those possibilities. A must read!

I have no words to describe what this book has meant to me. If there were one human being, no longer alive, whom I could meet in person, it would be Jacques Lusseyran. The book reminds me again and again that there can be light, love and hope even at the bleakest, darkest times and that we see with more than our eyes.

This is one of the most incredible books I have ever read! Lusseyran describes and reflects everything inside myself that I never thought I could find in anyone else. He is brilliant! If I could meet anyone who ever walked this planet, Lusseyran would definately be who I'd meet. He has become a role model.