Swastika over Paris - Hardcover

Josephs has written "an accessible personalized account of the events and decrees initiated in Paris" against French Jews during World War II. He tells the stories of Armand Kohn, a prosperous French banker and businessman whose aunt married a Rothschild, and Paulette Szlifke, a teenage fighter in the Jewish Resistance, who survived Auschwitz. These two define the range of Jewish experience in Occupied France. Kohn, thoroughly assimilated, a decorated French veteran of World War I, refused to believe he and his family were in danger until they were finally separated at Buchenwald. Szlifke welcomed the chance for open rebellion against the Nazis, while fearing their retaliation against her Polish immigrant parents. Their stories are made more poignant by the knowledge that Alois Brunner, who was responsible for deporting thousands of French Jews, is alive and unrepentant in Syria. Highly recommended reading.
- William C. McCully, Park Ridge P.L., Ill.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The story of French Jewry under the German occupation of Paris is here poignantly, soberly told through the experiences of Armand Kohn, the only member of the Rothschild family to remain in occupied Paris, and Paulette Szlifke, a 16-year-old member of the French Resistance. Josephs, a British lawyer, recounts how the Nazis, with the collaboration of French authorities and informers, progressively restricted the professional activities and lives of Jews preliminary to deporting them to the death camps, which are described here in grisly detail. Unlike activist Szlifke, Kohn conformed to Nazi decrees, doing so, according to Josephs, to avoid reprisals to the Rothschild Hospital which he headed. In their turn Szlifke and Kohn would be deported to the camps--and both survive. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.