A
Good Place to Hide
By
Peter Grose
ISBN:
9781681771243
A
2015 Release from
Pegasus
Books
The
period between 1939 and 1944 in Europe was not smooth and elegant. Relative
calm settled over France as the Vichy Government moved to solidify itself and
accommodate German occupation in the Northern Zone. A ragged wave of refugees
from eastern Europe rolled west. As author Peter Grose notes, the central
figures were Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Winston
Churchill. War was the order of the day and as competing armies surged across
the land, residents of a small, almost unnoticed group of farm villages in the
high Loire valley found themselves responsible for a large humanitarian effort.
It
didn’t seem to matter that for a thousand years the Huguenots had been
persecuted for their religious and social beliefs. They were prepared to hide
Jewish refugees at the drop of a trigger. And because of Haute-Loire’s
proximity to Switzerland, they became a conduit for protection and saving of
thousands of Jewish refugees from all over Europe, hiding them and moving them
on to safety in neutral Switzerland.
The
book is at times mesmerizing with it’s incredible tales of seventeen-year-old
Piton, a guide who made the perilous journey perhaps a hundred times, to
Virginia Hall, an American woman who asserted herself into the fabric of Resistance
command and directed dozens of parachute drops, movement of large amounts of
cash, rescue of prisoners and destruction of key transportation links to
disrupt German military operations.
The
book is over-long in some details and in places needs trimming to increase its
impact. But it is a strong inspiring tale of man’s humanity toward man and a detailing
of some clever and scary maneuvers by those same humans. It was hard to put
down and is a grand testament to the women and men of Haute-Loire villages who
refused to bow to the fascist German fist, who saved almost a generation of
Jews.
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