Suzanne's children: a daring rescue in Nazi Paris

Description

"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"--;Intro; Dedication; Epigraph; Map of Paris; Dramatis Personae; Chapter 1: Strangers; Chapter 2: The Real War; Chapter 3: Paris by Night; Chapter 4: La Plaque Tournante; Chapter 5: Monsieur Henri; Chapter 6: Spring Wind, Winter Stadium; Chapter 7: The Ragged Network; Chapter 8: Suzanne and Sophie; Chapter 9: The Unimaginable; Chapter 10: La Clairière; Chapter 11: Le Grand Livre; Chapter 12: The Unraveling; Chapter 13: Flight; Chapter 14: All Saints' Day; Chapter 15: The Last Train; Chapter 16: Liberation; Chapter 17: The Aftermath; Photographs; Illustration Credits; Acknowledgments