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France’s shame

8th February 2007 by Helena 4 Comments  

Denise EpsteinYesterday I spent the day in Toulouse with Denise Epstein, the daughter of Irene Nemirovsky (see ‘We’ve never had it so good‘ blog below). Ever since I heard about Irene being carted off Auschwitz in front of her two daughters and read her brilliant book about the war, I have been obsessed with her story. I know there are millions of stories out there, most of which will never be told, but hers has really touched me.

Her daughter lives in a modest flat in Toulouse. She is now 77. She is a tiny woman but with a strength that shines through. Even now, after all these years, every time she talks about her mother tears well up in her eyes. One of the most interesting things she told me was that the characters in Suite Francaise are all based on real people that the family knew.

More shocking was the fact that it was the French police, not the Nazis, who pursued her and her little sister Elizabeth after her parents had been murdered. At the time she was thirteen and her sister was only five. She said they had a policy of deporting orphans because they knew what an economic catastrophe thousands of Jewish orphans would be for France. In fact when they were finally caught and arrested the Nazi officer they were taken to said he had no orders to deport them and told them to scarper.

It seems inconceivable that one can be arrested simply for belonging to a certain race. What’s to stop the French suddenly turning against the Brits here and stopping them from working, leading normal lives, owning property and then eventually carting them off to concentration camps? It seems far-fetched, but it happened to the Jews. I’m sure one of the reasons Irene didn’t simply leave France with her family when she could is that she didn’t believe it would actually happen to her. Maybe I would be the same. No, on second thoughts now that I know her story, I don’t think I’d take the chance. At the first sign of trouble we’d be off.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, France, Life, blog --> Tagged With: france, shame

4 thoughts on France's shame

  • Jackie Hosking says:
    8th February 2007 at 11:34 am

    I’ve just read ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjama’s’ – a very disturbing yet captivating book. It tells the story – or at least part of the story through the eyes of a German child. It’s quite an amazing read.

  • helena says:
    8th February 2007 at 11:36 am

    Thanks Jackie – I will read it, it would be interesting to see it from the other side.

  • Arthur Burland says:
    9th February 2007 at 10:58 am

    Browse, if you wish, ISBN 2-7089-5375-3, Les Camps Du Sud-Ouest De La France 1939-1944.

    Two sentences of note:
    “Finding a good excuse for bad behaviour is the nearest many come to abstract thought.”
    “Our perennial temptation – the the denial of responsibility for our own actions.”

    Best wishes, Arthur.

  • spymum says:
    10th February 2007 at 12:31 pm

    ‘The boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ is an amazing book, and I shall now go and get ‘Suite Francaise’.

    It is impossible to comprehend how the French Police could behave so; more zealous in this instance than the Nazis. It make s one want to weep.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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