Description
“In her deeply affecting memoir, Sinclair brilliantly captures what her grandfather endured at Royallieu-Compiègne….[and] reminds us of how little time is left to gather every one of these sacred stories.”—Jewish Book Council, in recognition as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award
"This story has haunted me since I was a child."
So begins Anne Sinclair in her best-selling personal account about her journey to find answers about her own life and that of her grandfather Léonce Schwartz. In the Shadows of Paris is part memoir, part historical document revealing a lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust. On 12 December 1941, the Nazis carried out a mass arrest—in French the word is rafle, but there is no equivalent in English that captures the horror—of einflussreiche Juden, as the Germans put it. For that there is an equivalent: “influential Jews.”
Those doctors, professors, artists and others at the upper levels of French society were then imprisoned less than fifty miles from Paris in the Royallieu-Compiègne concentration camp. Those who did not perish in Frontstalag 122 were deported by the infamous cattle cars to Auschwitz and other death camps, except for the few to escape that fate. Léonce Schwartz was one of them.
Awards
Shortlisted — National Jewish Book Award, 2021
Also By: Sandra Smith 
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From the celebrated author of the international bestseller Suite Française, a novel about ambition and greed set against the fabulously wealthy French aristocracy of the 1920s.
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A story of hope and inspiration that becomes torn in the hands of the cold and greedy, and of betrayal by the powerful over lesser ones.
The Prodigal Child
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A story of hope and inspiration that becomes torn in the hands of the cold and greedy, and of betrayal by the powerful over lesser ones.
Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works: A Norton Critical Edition
First Edition, E Book, 2021
“Smith successfully captures Maupassant’s depiction of nineteenth-century French culture using terminology that allows these wonderful texts to reach a fresh generation of readers. A solid...
The Necklace and Other Stories: Maupassant for Modern Times
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From the best-selling translator of Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française comes this bold new translation that reinterprets Guy de Maupassant’s best works for a new generation.
