Agents for escape : inside the French Resistance, 1939-1945 /

The French Resistance to Hitler and the collaborationist regime at Vichy, 1940-1944, remains a subject of great interest, even after the passage of more than a half-century. The Resistance was many and diverse things, encompassing partisans of underground activities, political parties, forces of ideological and social renewal, and ordinary people who chose to enlist in the cause of liberation. Andre Rougeyron was among the latter. Automobile engineer and racing car driver in prewar days, a man without pronounced political affiliations, Rougeyron very early committed himself to active resistance. In these memoirs, published privately in 1947, Rougeyron offers an intensely personal account of Normandy, mainly the city of Domfront in the Orne, under the German occupation. Often passionate, always spirited, the author relates his own personal odyssey as a resister but also provides devastating commentary about "unscrupulous Frenchmen," as he labels them, who aided the enemy, often in the most brutal ways. His account includes harrowing details of his own arrest, incarceration, and deportation to Germany, and the marvel of his escape. Overall, this is a very interesting and useful memoir, providing first hand confirmation of much that has been assumed or said about life in the Resistance. All levels. N. Greene Wesleyan University

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 Feindsbegünstigung (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. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.