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Suzanne’s Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson
My rating: 5 of 5 starsAnother view of the The Holocaust, this time from within France. Holocaust deniers would have a difficult time denying the relocation and murder of Jews by the Nazis if they were to read this book. What was an eye-opener to me was the ways in which the French themselves participated in the relocation and subsequent deaths of Jews through the years of Vichy France.This story of one woman’s network that saved 1000 Jewish children from the Nazi gas chambers was well-written and very well-researched. The lengths that Suzanne Spaak (a non-Jew) and her network went through to prevent the murder of Jewish children was amazing. She spent large sums of her own inheritance on providing sustenance for the children along with moving them out of reach to the Nazis.What was interesting is that Vichy France cooperated fully with their Nazi in the rounding up of and deportation of 90,000 Jews. Vichy France and even modern day France feels as if they were justified in sending so many Jews to the gas chambers and death camps because the majority of those deported were “foreign” Jews instead of “French” Jews. The Nazi attack on the children displayed their hatred of the Jews by trying to murder the bloodlines in an effort to stop the younger Jews from filling the void caused by the deaths of adults.What was interesting was the way Charles de Gaulle cast off the accomplishments of Allied troops when he stated that French countrymen were the ones who freed France from the grip of Nazi occupation. In doing so he swept Vichy France under the proverbial carpet even though he himself was working against them from the safety of London.The pictorial section of the major subjects of the book was an extra treat.