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    The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
    The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
    The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir

    Written by Justus Rosenberg

    Narrated by Rob Shapiro

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    An unforgettable World War II memoir set in Nazi-occupied France and filled with romance and adventure: a former Eastern European Jew remembers his flight from the Holocaust and his extraordinary four years in the French underground. Justus Rosenberg, now 98, has taught literature at Bard College for the past fifty years.

    In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, sixteen-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south. A chance meeting led him to Varian Fry, an American journalist in Marseille who was helping thousands of men and women escape the Nazis, among them artists and intellectuals Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, and Max Ernst.

    With his German background, understanding of French cultural, and fluency in several languages, including English, Justus became an invaluable member of Fry’s refugee network as a spy and scout. The spry blond who looked even younger than his age flourished in the underground, handling counterfeit documents, secret passwords, and black market currency, surveying escape routes, and dealing with avaricious gangsters. When Fry was eventually forced to leave France, his trusted colleague Justus—Gussie, as he was affectionately known—could not get out. For the next four years, Justus relied on his wits and skills to escape captivity, survive several close calls with death, and continue his fight against the Nazis, working with the French Resistance and eventually the United States Army. At the war’s end, Justus emigrated to America and built a new life.

    Justus’ story is a powerful saga of bravery, daring, adventure, and survival with the soul of a spy thriller. Reflecting on his past, Justus sees his life as a confluence of circumstances. As he writes, ""I survived the war through a rare combination of good fortune, resourcefulness, optimism, and, most important, the kindness of many good people.""

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 28, 2020
    ISBN9780062849243
    Author

    Justus Rosenberg

    JUSTUS ROSENBERG (1921-2021) was born in Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland), in 1921. Graduating from the Sorbonne, in Paris, he worked with the French underground for four years and then served in the United States Army. For his wartime service, Rosenberg received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. For seventy years, he taught at American universities; most recently as professor emeritus of languages and literature at Bard College, where he was on faculty for fifty years. He is the cofounder of the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation, which works to combat anti-Semitism. In 2017 the French ambassador to the United States personally made Rosenberg a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, among France’s highest decorations, for his heroism during World War II.

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    Reviews for The Art of Resistance

    3.5/5

    19 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Interesting look at WWII from a resistor of the Nazis in France.
    • 3/5
      The Prologue of this book is the best part of the whole book. Justice Rosenberg had slipped out of one line at a Nazi internment camp and wandered over to a very long time. He found out that it was for prisoners who wanted to see a doctor for their ailments. He thought maybe it would be an easier way to escape! He questioned a young woman who was able to tell him what kind of diseases are so serious that he would have to be admitted. He knew how to heat up a thermometer and he had acting experience to feign pain. It worked. But the next morning, he woke up to find that the doctor had operated on him for appendicitis!The next part on the one page prologue was even more exciting and surprising. I think I read the Prologue four times!Unfortunately the rest of the book winds around and around his story. I was very interested in his parents but not so much in his social life with his friends in college. There was much of that in his book and not enough depth about his feeling of not knowing it his parents were still alive. The author has had a very long and meaningful life. I just wish that he had a good writer alongside him to ask questions. His experiences in the French Resistance were amazing but I think more questions from another person at his side would made his experiences much more memorable. His life is amazing but his story meanders.I received an Advanced Review Copy from the publisher as a win from FirstReads. My thoughts and views are entirely my own.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating look into his experiences during WWII as a resistance fighter. The story flows effortlessly, like words on ice. It was a "confluence of circumstances" that led him into that life and out of it as well.