Overview

99-year-old literature professor Justus Rosenberg escaped the Holocaust and spent four daring years in the French Underground during World War II. Now he finally writes his own unforgettable epic. A gripping memoir from an Eastern European Jew who fought in the French Resistance. ... The narrative tension is continuous, as Rosenberg recalls imprisonments, escapes from confinement, and successful missions against the Nazis. --Kirkus (starred review) The Art of Resistance is unlike any World War II memoir before it. Its author, Justus Rosenberg, has spent the past seventy years teaching the classics of literature to American college students. Hidden within him, however, was a remarkable true story of wartime courage and romance worthy of a great novel. Here is Professor Rosenberg's elegant and gripping chronicle of his youth in Nazi-occupied Europe, when he risked everything to stand against evil. 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 two years during the war 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. For the past fifty years, he has taught literature at Bard College, shaping the inner lives of generations of students. Now he adds his own story to the library of great coming-of-age memoirs: The Art of Resistance is a powerful saga of bravery and defiance, a true-life spy thriller touched throughout by a professor's wisdom.

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9780062996053

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Reviews

Gripping. ... Fearless. ... Recalls imprisonments, escapes from confinement, and successful missions against the Nazis. ... A welcome addition to the World War II memoir shelf. --Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

Gripping. ... Fearless. ... Recalls imprisonments, escapes from confinement, and successful missions against the Nazis. ... A welcome addition to the World War II memoir shelf. --Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review [A] powerful debut memoir. ... Rosenberg, a modest narrator, nevertheless writes thrillingly of his life. ... Has all the suspense of a tense spy thriller. --Publishers Weekly Rosenberg provides a thrilling account of gut-wrenching wartime experiences. ... Highly recommended. --Library Journal, STARRED Review

Author Information

JUSTUS ROSENBERG 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 the last seventy years, he has taught at American universities; his is professor emeritus of languages and literature at Bard College, where he has been 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 Legion d'Honneur, among France's highest decorations, for his heroism during World War II. He lives with his wife in New York's Hudson Valley.

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