Quote:
Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
I challenge some information stated in the blurb. It says, "Like most gentiles in Nazi-occupied Paris, architect Lucien Bernard has little empathy for the Jews."
Although I'm only a casual student of the Holocaust, I had never heard that charge against most gentiles in Nazi-occupied Paris. I did a quick search and found this from an organization called HEART (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team): "very few Jews who possessed French citizenship fell into the Germans net. The French police refused to arrest them. When the SD attempted to organise street pressgangs, the French Jews found friends to hide them.( http://www.holocaustresearchproject....renchjews.html).
Yes, it is an historical novel. But historical novels are supposed to be based upon facts. But, that assertion appears to be contrary to the facts. |
For one thing, the blurb you quote says "Jews"; the HEART quote refers to "Jews who possessed French citizenship"--these are not the same thing.
I am certainly not a historian of the Holocaust, but I would point to the mass arrest of Jews in Paris in 1942, known as the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, in which the French police acted at the direction of the Nazi regime. More than 13,000 Jews were arrested, including children, and shipped to extermination camps. The French government apologized for its complicity in 1995. See, for example, the
NY Times story on the 70th anniversary of the roundup.
To bring this back to books, last year I listened to the novel
Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay, in which the young girl of the title and her family are among the Jews arrested during the roundup.