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And There Was Light - The Autobiography of a Blind Hero in the French Resistance (Paperback, New Ed) Loot Price: R467
Discovery Miles 4 670
You Save: R48 (9%)

And There Was Light - The Autobiography of a Blind Hero in the French Resistance (Paperback, New Ed)

Jacques Lusseyran; Translated by Elizabeth R. Cameron

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List price R515 Loot Price R467 Discovery Miles 4 670 You Save R48 (9%)

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Surely here is one of the most extraordinary of the participants in the French Resistance. Jacques Lusseyran was totally blinded in an accident at the age of seven. Owing to his parents' sympathetic awareness of his need to be accepted in a world of sighted people, he learned to live a normal life. He was a brilliant student and had a wide circle of friends when, during the first Nazi spring in Paris, he experienced intense revulsion at the cruelties inflicted upon Jews and other "undesirables", and transformed his friends into lieutenants in a resistance movement. He was seventeen years old. At the beginning, they circulated a secret newspaper, but in time the organization grew and then affiliated itself with other underground groups dedicated to aiding fugitives, downed Allied airmen, etc., escape. Lusseyran's handicap became a blessing for he was accustomed to relying on his memory rather than written records, and his special status as a blind person had given him an invaluable sixth sense about people. Still, in July of 1943, he and a dozen close co-workers were betrayed and sent to Buchenwald. He alone survived. More striking even than the author's conquest of his handicap, endurance in the face of suffering, restraint in recounting iniquity, is the strong spirit of optimism and joy in life that pervades this story of real and metaphorical darkness. (Kirkus Reviews)
'Light is in us even if we have no eyes.' It is a rare man who can maintain a love of life through the infirmity of blindness, the terrors of war, and the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. Such a man was Jacques Lusseyran, a French underground resistance leader during the Second World War. This book is his compelling and moving autobiography. Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight in an accident when he was eight years old. At the age of sixteen, he formed a resistance group with his schoolfriends in Nazi-occupied France. Gradually the small resistance circle of boys widened, cell by cell. In a fascinating scene, the author tells of interviewing prospective underground recruits, 'seeing' them by means of their voices, and in this way weeding out early the weak and the traitorous. Eventually Jacques and his comrades were betrayed to the Germans and interrogated by the Gestapo. After a fifteen month incarceration in Buchenwald, the author was one of thirty to survive from an initial shipment of two thousand.

General

Imprint: Floris Books
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Release date: March 1985
First published: June 1990
Authors: Jacques Lusseyran
Translators: Elizabeth R. Cameron
Dimensions: 214 x 137 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 247
Edition: New Ed
ISBN-13: 978-0-86315-507-9
Languages: English
Subtitles: French
Categories: Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Historical, political & military
Books > Fiction > True stories > Endurance & survival
Books > Biography > Historical, political & military
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LSN: 0-86315-507-3
Barcode: 9780863155079

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