"Thrillingly tells the story of an Eastern European Jew's flight from the Holocaust and the years he spent fighting in the French underground." - USA Today
An American Library in Paris Book Award "Coups de Coeur" Selection
In 1937, after witnessing a violent Nazi mob in his hometown of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, sixteen-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent by his Jewish parents to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, the Nazis came again, as France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, Justus fled Paris, heading south. A chance meeting led him to Varian Fry, an American journalist in Marseille who led a clandestine network helping thousands of men and women-including many legendary artists and intellectuals, among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, and Max Ernst-escape the Nazis. With his intimate understanding of French and German culture, and fluency in several languages, including English, Justus became an invaluable member of Fry's operation as a spy and scout.
After the Vichy government expelled Fry from France, Justus worked in Grenoble, recruiting young men and women for the Underground Army. For the next four years, he would be an essential component of the Resistance, relying on his wits and skills to survive several close calls with death. Once, he found himself in a Nazi internment camp, with his next stop Auschwitz-and yet Justus found an ingenious way to escape. He spent two years gathering intelligence, surveying German installations and troop movements on the Mediterranean. Then, after the allied invasion at Normandy in 1944, Justus became a guerrilla fighter, participating in and leading commando raids to disrupt the German retreat across France.
At the end of the Second World War, Justus emigrated to America, and built a new life. After decades teaching literature at Bard College, he now adds his own story to the library of great coming-of-age memoirs, a "gripping" chronicle of his youth in Nazi-occupied Europe, when he risked everything to stand against evil ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).