Norman Lebrecht

For Jews in Occupied France, survival was a matter of luck

Hadley Freeman movingly describes the very different fates of the Glass family as they attempted to escape the Nazis

The Occupation of Paris by the Nazis. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 28 March 2020

Late in his life, I asked my uncle René about his exploits in wartime France. What I knew was that my family left Paris in 1940, around the time a great-uncle was shot dead in the street by a German army officer. They headed south to the Mediterranean, where my two uncles organised a network of safe homes for fugitives to lie low in until they could be smuggled out.

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