Read more
This diary is one of the most precious--and readable--pieces of testimony about life in Vichy France under Nazi occupation. Léon Werth was a Jewish writer who left Paris in June 1940 and hid out in a small village. We see how the Occupation affected life in the countryside and, after his return to Paris, the insurrection of August 1944.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Translator's Introduction
- Jean-Pierre Azéma's Introduction
- Lucien Febvre's Introduction
- Preface
- 1940
- 1941
- 1942
- 1943
- 1944
- Appendix
- Index
About the author
Léon Werth (1878-1955) was a prominent French-Jewish writer, art critic, and close friend to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A well-known commentator on French society during both World Wars, Werth spent the years of the Second World War in hiding from the Nazis, composing Déposition.
David Ball is Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature at Smith College. His translations include a Henri Michaux anthology that won the MLA's prize for literary translation, and Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944, winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for Nonfiction.
Summary
This diary is one of the most precious--and readable--pieces of testimony about life in Vichy France under Nazi occupation. Léon Werth was a Jewish writer who left Paris in June 1940 and hid out in a small village. We see how the Occupation affected life in the countryside and, after his return to Paris, the insurrection of August 1944.
Additional text
There is much to be admired in Werth's Deposition. While the immediate context and description of a rural village at war is valuable in and of itself, Werth's musings on politics, the press, and human nature add a dimension that makes this more than a chronicle of shortages and daily life in a small town. Werth is both an observer and a participant in the history unfurling before him. He captures the ambiguity, ambivalence, and endless waiting associated with the war as it was happening. With the advantage of hindsight, scholars have written about the topics that Werth experienced and recorded in real time with the extraordinary talent of an ethnographer....David Ball's highly readable translation of this remarkable record is a welcome addition for scholars of the Vichy period and suitable for classroom use.
