“Jacqueline Mendels Birn has written an impressive, moving story of her family’s remarkable survival in France during the Nazi occupation. It reads like a fast paced novel, but there is nothing fictional about it. Indeed, her book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the dark history of France from its invasion in 1940 to its liberation at the end of 1944. Through her eyes and deft accounting we see history unfold. This remarkable story has all the best elements of our human existence – heroism, courage, and humanity.”

- Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat

Special Representative of the President and Secretary

of State on Holocaust-Era Issues in the Clinton Administration