Deposition 1940-1944

Historians agree: the diary of L�on Werth (1878-1955) is one of the most precious--and readable--pieces of testimony ever written about life in France under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime. Werth was a free-spirited and unclassifiable writer. He is the author of eleven novels art and dance criticism acerbic political reporting and memorable personal essays. He was Jewish and left Paris in June 1940 to hide out in his wife's country house in Saint-Amour a small village in the Jura Mountains. His short memoir <em>33 Days </em>recounts his struggle to get there. <em>Deposition</em> tells of daily life in the village on nearby farms and towns and finally back in Paris where he draws the portrait of a Resistance network in his apartment and writes an eyewitness report of the insurrection that freed the city in August 1944. <p/>From Saint-Amour we see both the Resistance in the countryside derailing troop trains punishing notorious collaborators--and growing repression: arrests torture deportation and executions. Above all we see how Vichy and the Occupation affect the lives of farmers and villagers and how their often contradictory attitudes evolve from 1940-1944. Werth's ear for dialogue and novelist's gift for creating characters animate the diary: in the markets and in town we meet real French peasants and shopkeepers railroad men and the <em>patronne</em> of the caf� at the station schoolteachers and gendarmes. They come off the page alive and the countryside and villages come alive with them. <p/>With biting irony Werth records almost daily what Vichy-German propaganda was saying on the radio and in the press. We follow the progress of the war as people did then day by day. These entries make interesting often amusing reading a stark contrast with his gripping entries on the persecution and deportation of the Jews. <em>Deposition</em> is a varied and complex piece of living history and a pleasure to read.<br>