Résistance

Title: Résistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France
Author: Agnès Humbert
Translated: Barbara Mellor
Publisher: Blumsberry, 2008 (Originally by Editions Emile-Paul Frères, 1946
Pages: 357
Begun: March 6, 2009
Completed: March 18, 2009

This book is truly living through Humbert's eventful ordeal of living in occupied Paris, to her eventual arrest, imprisonment, deportation, release, and reentry. The book is divided into 3 sections.

The first is in journal format taken straight from her journals--possibly with some editing on her part. The last entry is 2 days before her arrest. No one knows where she hid this journal so that it was not found by the Germans, but thankfully it was never found. She is one of the only people from this era that used real names and places in her journals. Most others used pseudonyms so as to protect the "guilty". Honestly, though she depicts the circumstances, the birth of the "movement de resistance", I would never have known she played such an important part in the resistance mouvement had it not been for the afterword of the book. In this historical document they explain in more detail some of the events of the book that she glossed over. She was definitely a prominent figure.

The second section follows a journal format, but is really recollections from her time of imprisonment. After her arrest, she, obviously, did not keep a journal, but she had an acute memory and was able to recall names of other inmates and circumstances to the tiniest detail. As soon as they were "released", she began writing about her imprisonment, so the memories were very vivid and real.

The third and final section picks up the real journal again as she works with the US Army as they weeded out Nazis still hiding in and around the area where her final incarceration took place. I guess one of the most amazing things to me from this section was how long the war continued after the war was ended! It was over 2 months after they were liberated that they were accompanied back to Paris. During that time, Humbert organized a hospital to take care of wounded, farms to help supply food for the starving, hunted out Nazis, and tried to keep peace with the Polish who were looting and vandalizing anything German.

I got a good laugh out of the paragraph where she described the Germans post-war. Everywhere she went she heard the same thing "We hated Hitler! But our hands were tied." To which she would reply "Were your hands tied more tightly than ours?" She says she could never resist the satisfaction of telling them that "we [the French] preferred to risk our lives rather than continue to live under Hitler." Then: "The Germans are a spineless lot on the whole, lackiing any ability to reason things through or view them with a critical spirit; and they suffer from a total and absolute lack of initiative, inculcated by their educational system down the centuries." !!! And the French, aren't?!

Humbert tells the story in a nearly void-of-emotion, matter-of-fact way. The atrocities that she does describe are stunning, but not described in a vulgar manner

I was reminded over and over again at the utter depravity of man. I cannot imagine people being so inhumane, but sadly to say, they were and even worse than what she witnessed. I also couldn't help asking myself if I would be willing to suffer the same atrocities she suffered for the sake of her country for MY Lord. What an even greater cause--and yet, would I be willing?

It is an excellent read. A good reminder of what the depravity of man and total abandonment to the beliefs of one man can lead to.