Deposition 1940-1944
Seiten
2021
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-760296-6 (ISBN)
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-760296-6 (ISBN)
This diary is one of the most precious--and readable--pieces of testimony about life in Vichy France under Nazi occupation. Léon Werth was a Jewish writer who left Paris in June 1940 and hid out in a small village. We see how the Occupation affected life in the countryside and, after his return to Paris, the insurrection of August 1944.
Historians agree: the diary of Léon Werth (1878-1955) is one of the most precious--and readable--pieces of testimony ever written about life in France under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime. Werth was a free-spirited and unclassifiable writer. He is the author of eleven novels, art and dance criticism, acerbic political reporting, and memorable personal essays. He was Jewish, and left Paris in June 1940 to hide out in his wife's country house in Saint-Amour, a small village in the Jura Mountains. His short memoir 33 Days recounts his struggle to get there. Deposition tells of daily life in the village, on nearby farms and towns, and finally back in Paris, where he draws the portrait of a Resistance network in his apartment and writes an eyewitness report of the insurrection that freed the city in August, 1944.
From Saint-Amour, we see both the Resistance in the countryside, derailing troop trains, punishing notorious collaborators--and growing repression: arrests, torture, deportation, and executions. Above all, we see how Vichy and the Occupation affect the lives of farmers and villagers and how their often contradictory attitudes evolve from 1940-1944. Werth's ear for dialogue and novelist's gift for creating characters animate the diary: in the markets and in town, we meet real French peasants and shopkeepers, railroad men and the patronne of the café at the station, schoolteachers and gendarmes. They come off the page alive, and the countryside and villages come alive with them.
With biting irony, Werth records, almost daily, what Vichy-German propaganda was saying on the radio and in the press. We follow the progress of the war as people did then, day by day. These entries make interesting, often amusing reading, a stark contrast with his gripping entries on the persecution and deportation of the Jews. Deposition is a varied and complex piece of living history, and a pleasure to read.
Historians agree: the diary of Léon Werth (1878-1955) is one of the most precious--and readable--pieces of testimony ever written about life in France under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime. Werth was a free-spirited and unclassifiable writer. He is the author of eleven novels, art and dance criticism, acerbic political reporting, and memorable personal essays. He was Jewish, and left Paris in June 1940 to hide out in his wife's country house in Saint-Amour, a small village in the Jura Mountains. His short memoir 33 Days recounts his struggle to get there. Deposition tells of daily life in the village, on nearby farms and towns, and finally back in Paris, where he draws the portrait of a Resistance network in his apartment and writes an eyewitness report of the insurrection that freed the city in August, 1944.
From Saint-Amour, we see both the Resistance in the countryside, derailing troop trains, punishing notorious collaborators--and growing repression: arrests, torture, deportation, and executions. Above all, we see how Vichy and the Occupation affect the lives of farmers and villagers and how their often contradictory attitudes evolve from 1940-1944. Werth's ear for dialogue and novelist's gift for creating characters animate the diary: in the markets and in town, we meet real French peasants and shopkeepers, railroad men and the patronne of the café at the station, schoolteachers and gendarmes. They come off the page alive, and the countryside and villages come alive with them.
With biting irony, Werth records, almost daily, what Vichy-German propaganda was saying on the radio and in the press. We follow the progress of the war as people did then, day by day. These entries make interesting, often amusing reading, a stark contrast with his gripping entries on the persecution and deportation of the Jews. Deposition is a varied and complex piece of living history, and a pleasure to read.
Léon Werth (1878-1955) was a prominent French-Jewish writer, art critic, and close friend to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A well-known commentator on French society during both World Wars, Werth spent the years of the Second World War in hiding from the Nazis, composing Déposition. David Ball is Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature at Smith College. His translations include a Henri Michaux anthology that won the MLA's prize for literary translation, and Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944, winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for Nonfiction.
Acknowledgments
Translator's Introduction
Jean-Pierre Azéma's Introduction
Lucien Febvre's Introduction
Preface
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
Appendix
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 20.08.2021 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 12 b/w photos |
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 236 x 160 mm |
| Gewicht | 567 g |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte |
| Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton | |
| Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918) | |
| Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945 | |
| Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-19-760296-7 / 0197602967 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-760296-6 / 9780197602966 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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