Suzannes Children, Anne Nelson
Suzannes Children, Anne Nelson
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Suzanne's Children
A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris

Author: Anne Nelson

Narrator: Anne Nelson

Unabridged: 8 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/17/2017


Synopsis

A story of courage in the face of evil. The tense drama of Suzanne Spaak who risked and gave her life to save hundreds of Jewish children from deportation from Nazi Paris to Auschwitz. This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust.

Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country's leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups.

Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups "kidnapped" hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers.

In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Suzanne Spaak is honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among Nations.

About Anne Nelson

Anne Nelson is an acclaimed journalist, playwright, and lecturer. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a New Harmony Dramatists Fellowship. Her articles have been published widely, and she is the author of The Guys, one of the first major plays to address the September 11 attacks. She also served as a war correspondent in El Salvador and Guatemala from 1980 to 1983, and her articles appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Her first book, Murder Under Two Flags: The United States, Puerto Rico, and the Cerro Maravilla Cover-up, was made into a feature film.


Reviews

This is a soul searching and informative book detailing not only the rescue work by Suzanne (Suzette) Spaak but to the many of her friends and contacts throughout France and Belgium by Protestants, Catholics, Communists and Jewish people that collectively assisted in saving over a thousand children......more

Goodreads review by Theresa

“I witnessed so many deaths, and not just firing squads – humans can be so horrible.” Abbe Franz Stock, German prison chaplain at Fresnes, Resistance sympathiser. Codename Suzette is an incredible account of resistance and salvation. It’s narrative style merged with clear facts marks this as an acce......more

Goodreads review by Amy

This is the story of Belgian, Suzanne Spaak and her work with the French Resistance where she personally rescued hundreds of Jewish children from deportation to Auschwitz from Nazi occupied Paris. Some interesting facts that I picked up: There was a "French Gestapo" known as the "Bonny-Lafont Gang,"......more