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Alain F. Corcos was raised by a family of nonbelievers. When he
grew up and pursued a career in science, he encountered nothing to
challenge his lack of faith. In fact, he would have considered his
atheism completely unremarkable if not for the reactions he
confronted again and again: - How can you be moral when you don't
believe in God?
- If you know you can't prove God doesn't exist, doesn't that make
you agnostic?
- Aren't you afraid of death?
In "Atheism, Science, and Me," Dr. Corcos reminisces about
satisfying his thirst for knowledge through research rather than
religious doctrine or philosophy. While he has no interest in
"converting" anybody to atheism, the good-natured enthusiasm with
which he presents his worldview conveys the joys of a life
unencumbered by religion.
ALAIN F. CORCOS is a retired professor of botany. His previous
books are "Mendel, Genes and You; Race and Difference Among Us";
"Biological Experiments and Ideas";" Race and You"; "Gregor
Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids: A Guided Study (with Floyd
V. Monaghan)"; "The Myth of Human Races"; "Four Short True Stories
of a French Family"; "The Myth of the Jewish Race: A Biologist's
Point of View"; "The Little Yellow Train: Survival and Escape from
Nazi France (June 1940-March 1944)"; and "Who Is a Jew? Thoughts of
a Biologist: An Essay Dedicated to the Jewish and Non-Jewish
Victims of the Nazi Holocaust."
I lived with my parents and my brother in southern France under the
German occupation from 1940 to 1944. We did not practice any
religion, but we were Jews according to Hitler because of our
ancestry. And since we had "Jewish blood" we were destined to
perish. My direct family survived, which is attributed to them
refusing to have anything to do with "racial" laws. However, I lost
two uncles, two aunts, and two cousins in death camps. In March
1944, my brother and I, seventeen and eighteen years old,
respectively, escaped from France through the Pyrenees, surrendered
to the Spanish police, and were jailed for a week in Spain. We
gained our freedom by being exchanged for two hundred pounds, each,
of American wheat. We joined the Allied forces in North Africa and
eight months later we landed in America to be trained as Air Force
personnel. When the war was over, I came back to France and headed
the family flower farm. I found that the methods for raising
flowers were medieval and I decided to go back to the U.S. to learn
more modern techniques. I landed in New York City on my way to San
Luis Obispo, California, where I became a student in horticulture
-- although my degrees are in botany and plant pathology. I taught,
as a university professor, in genetics, and I have always
considered myself a geneticist. I never forgot my experience in
France as a teenager, and I never accepted the idea that I was
considered a Jew because my ancestors were. My knowledge of
genetics gave me a categorical answer to the eternal question of
"Who is a Jew?" The answer is: Someone who follows the rites of
Judaism. Jews belong to a religious federation -- no matter how
loose it is. It is their religion that separates them from the
world, not something biological such as genes.
Alain Corcos, author of "The Little Yellow Train," presents
different moments in history from the perspective of his family and
friends. This is a must-read for anyone who wishes to gain insight
into how historical events impact the everyday lives of those who
experience them.
Between 1940 and 1944, when Alain Corcos was a teenager, the
Germans systematically plundered the French countryside to feed
their own armed forces and civilians. Both the Nazis and the
fascist Vichy government forced everyone with "Jewish blood" to
register as Jews, condemning those who complied to death in
concentration camps. The Little Yellow Train chronicles the years
of occupation in France, describing the Corcos family's struggles
to survive. In addition to finding enough food to sustain
themselves, they needed to forge records and identification cards
in order to conceal the fact that some of their ancestors were
Jewish. When the SS began kidnapping young French men and women to
work in German factories, the author and his brother decided that
the time had come to escape and join the Allied forces overseas.
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