The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
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Overview
An American Library in Paris Book Award "Coups de Coeur" Selection
The Art of Resistance is unlike any World War II memoir before it. Its author, Justus Rosenberg, has spent the past seventy years teaching the classics of literature to American college students. Hidden within him, however, was a remarkable true story of wartime courage and romance worthy of a great novel. Here is Professor Rosenberg’s elegant and gripping chronicle of his youth in Nazi-occupied Europe, when he risked everything to stand against evil.
In 1937, after witnessing a violent Nazi mob in his hometown of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, sixteen-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent by his Jewish parents to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, the Nazis came again, as France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, Justus fled Paris, heading south. A chance meeting led him to Varian Fry, an American journalist in Marseille who led a clandestine network helping thousands of men and women—including many legendary artists and intellectuals, among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, and Max Ernst—escape the Nazis. With his intimate understanding of French and German culture, and fluency in several languages, including English, Justus became an invaluable member of Fry’s operation as a spy and scout.
After the Vichy government expelled Fry from France, Justus worked in Grenoble, recruiting young men and women for the Underground Army. For the next four years, he would be an essential component of the Resistance, relying on his wits and skills to survive several close calls with death. Once, he found himself in a Nazi internment camp, with his next stop Auschwitz—and yet Justus found an ingenious way to escape. He two years during the war gathering intelligence, surveying German installations and troop movements on the Mediterranean. Then, after the allied invasion at Normandy in 1944, Justus became a guerrilla fighter, participating in and leading commando raids to disrupt the German retreat across France.
At the end of the Second World War, Justus emigrated to America, and built a new life. For the past fifty years, he has taught literature at Bard College, shaping the inner lives of generations of students. Now he adds his own story to the library of great coming-of-age memoirs: The Art of Resistance is a powerful saga of bravery and defiance, a true-life spy thriller touched throughout by a professor’s wisdom.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781094105215 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
Publication date: | 01/28/2020 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Map of Europe, 1936-1939 x
Map of Western Europe, 1940 xi
Map of Occupied France xii
Prologue 1
Part I
The Free City of Danzig (1921-1937) 5
A Pogrom German-Style (Spring 1937) 10
Preparing to Leave Danzig (Summer 1937) 23
At the Station (September 1937) 31
Berlin (September 2-12, 1937) 34
Part II
Paris (September 1937-September 3, 1939) 47
"The Phony War." (Paris, September 1939-June 1940) 65
The Debacle (Paris and Bayonne, June 1940) 73
Toulouse (June and July 1940) 90
To Marseille, in Marseille (August-September 1940) 97
Over the Pyrenees (September 11-13, 1940) 107
Walter Benjamin (Late September 1940) 113
Villa Air-Bel (November 1940-February 1941) 116
Mafia (February-June 1941) 128
Chagall (Spring 1941) 134
Max and Peggy Depart (July 1941) 135
The Expulsion of Fry; My Mountain Climbing Adventure (August-December 1941) 136
Grenoble (December 1941-August 26, 1942) 146
Part III
Internment (August 27-29, 1942) 153
Escape (September 6, 1942) 167
Underground Intelligence at Montmeyran (Autumn 1942-March 1943) 174
Manna from the Skies (November 1943-May 1944) 188
Last Days on the Farm (June 1944) 192
Becoming a Guerrilla (June 1944) 195
Haute Cuisine in the Camp (June-July 1944) 201
The Ambush (July 1944) 203
The 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion (August-October 1944) 208
The Teller Mine Incident (October 11, 1944) 219
Homecoming to Paris (December 1944-February 15, 1945) 223
Granville (February 15-March 8, 1945) 230
Unrra (April 1945-October 1945) 235
To America (October 1945-July 13, 1946) 247
Epilogue: What Happened to 251
Acknowledgments 275
Index 277