Synopsis
"The only merit of this book - and I insist on it - is that it is true, true from beginning to end. And this, you see, is definitely something!" So writes Andre Rougeyron in the Preface of his memoir, displaying a hint of the passion that undoubtedly accounted for his heroism in France and Germany during World War II - and displaying too his own modest self-regard. His chronicle of the years spent rescuing downed Allied airmen in France and consequently enduring German labor camps remains focused throughout on others. A myriad of individuals - both named and unnamed - and their sufferings and triumphs small and large suffuse his story.
His portrait of Normandy under occupation and his descriptions of life and death in the labor camps add important new information to current understanding of how French resisters and the camps operated. Equally significant and also fascinating is his evocation of people from diverse backgrounds brought together under unbearably trying circumstances.
Reviews
Privately published in France in 1947, this memoir by a self-effacing resistance hero offers continuous suspense and excitement. Rougeyron, an auto engineer living in Normandy, risked his life throughout the war rescuing downed Allied airmen, supplying them with clothes and identity papers and launching them down the underground escape pipeline. Caught by the Gestapo in 1944, he was charged with Feindsbegunstigung (abetting the enemy) and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. With verve and even humor, he tells the story of his struggle to survive and his spectacular escape during the camp's evacuation. Wearing prisoners' striped pajamas, his head shaven, unable to speak German and ignorant of local topography, he managed to evade capture and starvation until he made contact with advancing British troops. Rougeyron's jaunty narrative voice and powers of description add a fresh perspective on the resistance in Normandy at the time of the D-Day landings and on conditions at Buchenwald during the final months of WWII. He died in 1967 at the age of 68. Illustrated.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Both of these works join a growing body of literature on the French Resistance (see, for example, Claire Chevrillon's Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance, LJ 5/1/95). Rougeyron's memoir, first published privately in 1947, recounts his experiences rescuing downed Allied airmen in France during the war years. An auto engineer and experimental race car driver before the war, he joined the Resistance after the Nazi occupation and organized a network of resisters who rescued, sheltered, and assisted British and American flyers. Rougeyron's memoir is translated by the wife of the first Allied airman whose escape he facilitated. In marked contrast to Rougeyron's personal story is Weitz's scholarly account, the first to research women's roles in the Resistance in a thorough and comprehensive way. In addition to utilizing the limited archival information available, Weitz (humanities and modern languages, Suffolk Univ.) has relied on interviews with more than 70 survivors of the Resistance, primarily women. Weitz places their dangerous and in many ways nontraditional activities against the backdrop of the Vichy regime's antifeminism and stresses the opportunities afforded by the Resistance for women both to change roles and to assume new roles in French society. She painstakingly demonstrates that women's presence in the Resistance was much greater than was believed or known at the time. Both works are recommended for specialists in the field.?Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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