Sleeping with the enemy: New book claims Frenchwomen started a baby boom with Nazi men during Vichy regime Daily Mail Take a look at an interesting article we found.
The Suite Smell of Success Conde Nast Portfolio Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Metro Views: The most welcoming Jewish spaces in the US The Jersualem Post Take a look at an interesting article we found.
The statue of Liberty was created as a beacon of liberty for all its citizens. Enter the Patriot Act and those rights are being debated.
 by DreadPirateRoberts |
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 by Doc Nolan |
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 by OncDoc |
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August 06, 2008
What would it be like to watch an invading army march through your streets and destroy your way of life?
Read "Suite Francaise” and you might get an inkling.
It was Irene Nemirovsky's last work, written under intense pressure while danger was closing around her. She wrote the novel as the occupation was happening making it all the more remarkable. Truly, fiction in real time.
The first part dealt with a group of Parisians, during the early days of the occupation, who flee from the city to the presumably safe haven of the country. It then goes on to focus on the well heeled that adapt to their occupiers with surprising speed and equanimity. They celebrate with the Germans, profit from them and fall in love with them.
In essence, the rich look out for themselves, even if it means collaborating with the enemy. In her account, caste and money are all that matters.
While the only pockets of resistance come from the poor with little to lose.
A Russian Jew who converted to Catholicism, Nemirovsky was intending to make the final book contain five parts but she was sent to Auschwitz in 1942 before she was able to finish it. Where she died of typhus a month later. Or so they said.
It’s a small miracle this account survived at all. She entrusted her manuscript, in minuscule and barely readable handwriting, to her eldest daughter, who stayed one step ahead of death camps through ingenuity and sheer grace. Thinking the pages were part of her journal, she avoided the painful duty of reading them for decades, at which point she discovered what she had.
In a January 2006 interview with the BBC, her daughter, Denise, said, "For me, the greatest joy is knowing that the book is being read. It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It shows that the Nazis did not truly succeed in killing her. It is not vengeance, but it is a victory."
It occurred to me how blessed we are in never having experienced an occupation. How it must have been for those fleeing their homes and way of life, living from day to day. I couldn’t help wonder how I would react in the face of it. Would one’s set of beliefs and values go out the window at the onset of danger?
I’d like to believe I’d be as noble as Victor Lazlo but there's really no way of knowing.
Who knows how anyone would react? Do you?
Share the Eye:
350,000 New Stories Of France Under Occupation Covenant Zone Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, 2006 Book Buddies Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Wondering about Irène Némirovsky's regrets Jewish Literary Review Take a look at an interesting article we found.
To: poisonokie,I thought I was the only person to know about "The Road Past Mandalay". ...
Aug. 06, 2008 3:07 PM
Which war novel had the most impact on you?
7% 0% 21% 24% 10% 14% 24%
Charles Selden said...
It is time to define "change." Are the presidential candidates defining it as a verb, or a noun? Then how will they measure it? If a noun, does it mean "small change," like a stimulus payment? If a verb--what seems to be assumed--then what will change, when, and how much? Suggest they start the pursuit of change with details abut change.
poisonokie said...
I like Hemingway's, A Farewell To Arms best, possibly because I experienced the same sort of out-of-body experience he described after nearly being killed by an artillery shell burst, when I was involved in a 1960 car accident. Also, The Road Past Mandalay, by John Masters - a terrific dime novel account of the British in Iraq and Burma, and of course Dialogue With Death, by Arthur Koestler, a journalist caught up in the Spanish Civil War. We've been under a media-hype occupation in the U.S ever since the Nixon era, as was pointed out by Frank Zappa in his song, Plastic People: "Take a day, And look around, Watch the Nazis, Run your town, Then go home, And check yourself, You think we're talkin' bout, Someone else; But you're plastic people, oh baby now, you're such a drag". Now look at what has been represented as truth since 9/11 - Frank was ahead of his time.
Of the novels in the poll, the only one I have read (so far) is All Quiet on the Western Front.
But my favorite literary reference in terms of war comes, not from writers' works, but from their actual lives:
One of my favorite poets, Lord Byron, went to Greece to serve as an artillary officer in their fight for independence against the Turks. Conditions on the front were the harshest he had ever encountered and the fever he contracted in the war ultimately took his life at the age of 36.
One of my favorite novelists, George Orwell, went to Spain to fight in their Civil War and was wounded in the throat. He only partly recovered and, while he lived on for many years, the frailty in which it left him ultimately contributed to his death from tuberculosis at the age of 46.
Byron was a wealthy aristocrat. Orwell was an impoverished journalist. Their social and economic backgrounds were as different as could be. Yet both men traveled to lands far from home and gave their lives for fights that were not their own all because each one believed in a cause. Each was a brilliant writer but neither ever wrote a story as brilliant or heroic as his own life.
The only time in history that the United States have actually been invaded - not including the Revolutionary War, because that was technically before they'd won the war for independence - was during the War of 1812... when America was invaded by Canada. Canadians sacked Washington and burned the White House.
Now, I know that the Canadians were actually still the British, but as a Canadian I want to win just one small victory. To be fair, America retaliated and invaded Canada... and eventually won the war... but you know...
William Styron's, Sophie's Choice.
How a Nazi officer forced her to choose life for one child, and death for the other.
Despite her plea of "Don't make me choose. I can't choose", Sophie's words fall on deaf ears. When a young Nazi is told to take both children away, she releases her daughter, shouting "Take my little girl!". Sophie can only watch as the screaming little girl is carried away to die, her guilt and despair all too clear.
As a mother, I could not bear this...
The One at the Desk,
So that funny sond, "Blame Canada," actually has a little merit after all???
I am reading one right now that is really giving me a new view of war. The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte is about a war photographer/journalist (which Reverte was before he started writing novels) who has to come to terms with the price of his success and the images he has seen.
Inhumanity seems to be part of human nature throughout the world, to judge by what the protagonist has seen.
I picked up a copy of Suite Francaise awhile ago, but haven't gotten around to reading it. I shall have to remedy that.
I read the first couple of chapters of All Quiet on the Western Front this summer [we have to over analyze everything as a project] but stopped when I discovered that I don't have English until second semester.
I'm not one for war novels.
Mr. Peterman said, "Truly, fiction in real time," and I love that contradiction. She was writing fiction when most people were writing an S.O.S. And I get that. That was her S.O.S, I imagine.
It's intoxicating to imagine her in the midst of that wreckage, rummaging through the pieces of it and building them into art. It's powerful and fierce and full of her own sort of resistance.
I had to find her first sentence. I'm neurotic about first sentences. And this is it: "Hot, thought the Parisians." It makes you smile, doesn't it? I like her already. It's not a sentence. My favorite kind.
Fiction and war are such interesting bedfellows. When anything in life is too much, as Mr. Peterman said, to even imagine, fiction falls in between the one who must tell and the one who must listen like a buffer. And though sometimes fiction says the horrible, and even the true, it is easier on the teller and the listener because they can escape into the fact that, if only on that page and in that moment, it could have been written differently. It could have ended the way we wanted it to, and not where it really did.
Her daughter could not bear to read her journal. Who could? But when she discovers it is a novel, she has the courage to not only read it, but pass it to the entire world. "It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life," she says. Amazing.
And I think I love that it did not have an ending, something that her life, tragically, did.
God I love words.
Missed you all.
DreadPirateRoberts: I wish that "Blame Canada" song had no merit, and maybe it doesn't - but the reality of it is that Canadians are such pacifists that they don't try to uphold any sort of good name. So South Park gets their way... and I get blamed.
I should have seen this one coming. One day we are put in a state of high agitation only to be reeled back in with a good dousing of perspective.
Yesterday it was wiretapping and the inconvenience of airport security.
Today it is imagining that all these protective measures have failed and our government as we know it has fallen, and a not so friendly conquering army is parading down Main Street USA, posting new laws and bulletins, instituting curfews, rounding up resisters and public officials, and the only thing being broadcast on TV, radio and Ipod is coming from your new government.
I too hope that I could be counted on to be noble and brave so that when it is my time to be weighed and measured, I not too wanting. But talk is cheap unless it is converted into action, and too be totally honest, that is one scary scenario I would really like to avoid.
My favorite war novel was "Catch-22". It certainly did put a non-filtered light on the idiocy, futility, and horror of war. Just a side note, I spent a week around Sonora Mexico and was able to take bike trips to the "air strip" where they filmed the movie. All that remains are the potholes and vague outlines of where the buildings once stood. The desert had reclaimed it.
The books about war that impacted me the most by far were non-fiction, written by the likes of Hampton Sides ("Ghost Soldier") and Stephen Ambrose ("Band of Brothers", "The Wild Blue").
J. Peterman, I've added "Suite Francaise" to my list of must reading, somewhere near the top.
I think All Quiet on the Western Front or A L'Ouest, Rien de Nouveau was the most heart stopping tale I read as a young person. It really started me thinking about the value of a life.
Back in the real world, our son's god father was living it. A high school student at home with his parents on the Boulevard St. Germain. The evening is hot, the windows looking on the the street are open. He closes his book, gets up to get another from the shelf as a bullet comes through the window and lodges in the wall by the desk at which he had been sitting five seconds earlier. He looks out the window to see German soldiers in the street. This family had not left town because German soldiers were billeted in their country house in Normandy and they had no choice but to stay in Paris. The occupation was life changing for this man who never married and always lived with his sisters.
Several decades later, we all sit at that country house in Normandy and, as he tells the story, I can see and hear the fear and confusion as if it had all happened the day before.
It makes one wonder what it cost Victor Lazlo to act as he did. Of course fictional characters don't have nightmares unless the author wills it.
drdgscott said...
Mary Doria Russell's "Thread of Grace" is not only one of the best books I have read about occupation (in this case, the tensions between the Jewish community and occupiers in Italy), it is one of the best books I've read period.
I was going to make a comment about how people in occupied states tend to loose things like habeas corpus, the security and privacy of personal communications, and the exportation of their natural and corporate resources to foreign states, but I thought better of it.
Welcome back, Missive! How was your trip?
I for one have always been a sucker for the WWII love stories, it must have something to do with Rick, Ilsa, Victor & Sam & how they show that the human spirit can be Heroic when the circumstances call for it.
Can anyone really be a Victor Lazlo in today's world? I tend to find that it seems that caliber of human spirit is seemingly few & far between. I always found the true life tales of the people who's nobility & courage to stand up to the Fascists in WWII to be some of the most thought provoking & interesting parts of history itself. People like Miep who kept the Frank Family hidden; the folks who took the Children from the Kinder Transports, The small village in France that hid in plain sight the Jewish kids, the residents of St. Petersburg and so many more. People who at the time chose courage over cowering in fear & turning a blind eye towards the injustices.
Reading Anne Franks Diary, Sophie's Choice, Holocaust, & many other WWII written & inspired true stories I for one today cannot begin to comprehend the conditions, & the quite frankly the idea of when in that situation what would I do? Our book club last year read The Devil's Arithmetic By Jane Yolen. It's a Tween book about a modern day girl transported back to 1940's Poland. It really brought up a grand discussion about the quality of people's motives today & how circumstances can change attitudes at the drop of a hat.
I had to read All Quiet on the Western Front in High School along with the Red Badge of Courage I enjoyed All Quiet but the Red Badge was very difficult for me to read & relate to.
You read & hear a lot yet today about the Germans not knowing what was happening yet I'm always stunned at the number of stories that have come out of people hiding & helping the races/people persecuted in WWII. It always reminds me of some of the statements in the film Judgment at Nuremburg were Marlene says to Spencer Tracy: "Do you think we knew of those things? Do you think we wanted to murder women and children? Do you believe that? Do you? Mrs. Bertholt, I don't know what to believe. Good God. We're sitting here drinking. How could you think that we knew? We did not know. We did not know. As far as I can make out, no one in this country knew."To: poisonokie,
I thought I was the only person to know about "The Road Past Mandalay".
Unfortunately, most people get their view of war from movies, anti-war types (who've never been in one), or veterans who, having been in a war, don't always tell the truth.
Hemmingway wrote about the veterans of WWI who, when they tried to tell the truth, realized no one wanted to hear it, so they in turn fell into the habit of lying. Interestingly, the veteran Hemmingway wrote about actually enjoyed his time in combat but ending up saying how bad it was just to satisfy the listeners.
As a veteran, (my war is mentioned now in history books, or so I'm told) I usually don't recommend war movies or books. I recommend that you experience war first hand and then you'll realize why we veterans don't talk about it.
There is a difference between the experience of fighting in a war and being opposed, or supporter of a particular war. I may be opposed to Iraq but for Afghanistan. My personal experiences in war have nothing to do with my view of these wars as either right or wrong.
The Road Past Mandalay is perhaps one book I would recommend. It's mostly about the India-Burma-China threater duting WWII - a little known part of WWII.
more on the honor rollexeint said...
I recently read your post about Irène Némirovsky and wanted to let you know about an exciting new exhibition about her life, work, and legacy that will open on September 24, 2008 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage -A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City. Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française, which will run through the middle of March, will include powerful rare artifacts - the actual handwritten manuscript for Suite Française, the valise in which it was found, and many personal papers and family photos. The majority of these documents and artifacts have never been outside of France. For fans of her work, this exhibition is an opportunity to really "get to know" Irene. And for those who can't visit, there will be a special website that will live on the Museum's site http://www.mjhnyc.org/.
The Museum will host several public programs over the course of the exhibition's run that will put Némirovsky's work and life into historical and literary context. Book clubs and groups are invited to the Museum for tours and discussions in the exhibition's adjacent Salon (by appointment). It is the Museum's hope that the exhibit will engage visitors and promote dialogue about this extraordinary writer and the complex time in which she lived and died. To book a group tour, please contact Tracy Bradshaw at 646.437.4304 or tbradshaw@mjhnyc.org. Please visit our website at http://www.mjhnyc.org/ for up-to-date information about upcoming public programs or to join our e-bulletin list.
Thanks for sharing this info with your readers. Let me know if you need any more.
-Elizabeth Sinnreich (executiveintern@mjhnyc.org)
Alright I have now moved Suite Francaise up to the top of my needing to read book list. I will be getting it hopefully within the next week.
The Exhibit in New York is really making me think I need to seriously look into taking the trip out there sooner rather than later.
I am a couple of months pregnant and think it's not the best time for me to read about unduly upsetting subjects.
But I am enjoying a war novel, just the same: "Little Women!"
DPR,
It was great. Much needed. Thanks for asking.
And I loved your first post about preferring the 'war' in the lives of the authors.
rings90,
Also in Judgment at Nuremberg (in the same scene if I remember correctly), Richard Widmark points out how it seems no German in the 30's and 40's had ever heard of Adolf Hitler: "There are no Nazis in Germany. The Eskimos invaded Germany and took over. That's how all those terrible things happened. It wasn't the fault of the Germans. It was the fault of those damn Eskimos."
By the way, if you do come to New York for the exhibit, would you be interested in meeting? No pressure if you'd rather not but remember I'm a tour guide so I know all the best lunch spots.
tmd said...
Shute's A Town Like Alice is my favorite. It is fiction, but it deals with the prisoner marches after the fall of Kuala Lumpur--in this case, the rather aimless progression of women across the penninsula. In the course of the story, an Australian soldier is crucified for stealing a chicken for the women, but cut down by an officer who is unable to fulfill his last request. I find it useful to remember that all wars are conducted by people, and thus, in spite of the grand rhetoric, are inevitably short sighted, petty, capricious, and badly planned--it stops me from ranting too vigorously about the shortcomings of present conflicts. (It is also nice to read a WWII story with a postwar epilogue.)
To: Heiress:
Congratulations! We'll have to have a baby shower!
To: Heiress,
Congratulations! How exciting for you and your husband.
Irene Nemirovsky's humanization of both the French and Germans during the occupation was both surprising and believable. Coming from a person being held captive this was most impressive.
I was glued to the book and read it with both mind and heart.
Heiress,
Heartiest congratulations! And welcome to the club. Every corny, cheesy, cliche piece of advice you've ever heard about parenthood is absolutely true.
Greetings: Occupation. What a horrible thought. I guess thats why I have my sailboat. It's kind of my personal mental insurance policy. If everything falls to poop, I could just pack up my family and head south. Sometimes I consider that as a current option but I HAVE to think about my two boys.
And speeking of boys, Heiress, let the adventure begin! A heartfelt congratulations. My children are my life! It's awesome.
Every other day,
Every other day I get the blues
Every other day,
Every other day I get the blues
Sometimes it's monday wednesday friday
Sometimes its thursday, tues
ABernhard said...
Not on the list, and not a novel, "An Ocurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Bierce is one of the most influential pieces of writing in history, and deals with how the soldier deals internally with war. Peyton Farquhar, in the story, "escapes" to his wife and homestead, at least in thought. It's my belief that soldiers can only perform their job and protect us as long as they maintain that desire to provide for their own loved ones. The plot twisted ending inspired everyone from Hitchcock to Serling to Shyamalan.
Congrats Heiress, I just got married a couple of weeks ago, but am way far off from kids. My 20 month old niece, though, is a bundle of joy. You'll enjoy it.
Hieress,
My congratulations as well. You have really brought joy to our consideration of much more somberr topics. I'm totally up for a baby shower. We have a baby due to one of my nephew's wives next month, but after that, my knitting needles will be free and eager for a project.
tajar,
A baby is due to one of your nephew's wives? How many wives does your nephew have?
Sorry, I simply couldn't resist. (Okay, I admit, I hardly tried!)
Thank you all for your congratulations!
And for your reassurances. This is my second child; and all the advice I hear about looking after more than one is fairly horrifying! My girl is almost grown up now (5 yrs old) and I think we're all going to have a lot of fun together.
DPR...
I'm picturing this particular nephew with a harem: enough to keep me smiling for a while. When I typed those words I could hear my sixth grade teacher graoning. So, to clarify, I have five nephews. The wife of one of these will be having a baby next month.
Capt Neptune, you're a sailor after my own. I keep the big boat at the ready just in case everything goes FUBAR and it's time to take my son and two daughters and sweetie - as Joe says in Joe vs. the Volcano (the best movie ever made) - "far from the things of man". That boat is my "ripcord". Come the day I pull it, I'm never looking back.
One of my hobbies is sword fighting. Medieval and Viking Era sword fighting. It's a fairly mental and academic exercise, all the way up to the point where we throw down and have a little unstructured "play". During those times, it's easy to feel the beast hammering at the gate, trying to get out and tear, and rip, and gorge itself on the flesh of the enemy. Most of us have that beast in us. When I think of an "occupation army" - no matter what their flag, really - I feel my beast laughing inside and waiting to be let loose on the poor sorry bastards who get in the way. And I'm one of the wealthy ones! Must be something wrong with me. But come the day, I'll probably die in good company, and with a long brace of scalps on my belt.