by Andrew Kane
She nodded enthusiastically.
“Then let’s do it,” he said, reaching for her hand.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” she repeated as she grabbed hold of him.
Martin felt a sharp pang of anxiety as he glanced once more at the house. He turned to Elizabeth, smiled again, and together they stepped forward into the rest of their lives.
author’s note
This is a work of fiction. The main characters, their names and the incidents in which they are involved, are strictly products of the author’s imagination. Klaus Barbie, Boleslavs Maikovskis, Valerian Trifa, and John Demjanjuk are true historical figures, and, in alluding to them, the author has tried to remain as factual as research allows. The facts surrounding the cases of Maikovskis and Trifa were as described in this book. Barbie was the Gestapo Chief in Lyon during the period in which some of the events of this story take place, and he did lead a raid on a children’s home in the small town of Izieu, in the hills a few miles east of Lyon, on April 6, 1944. The fates of those children and their caretakers were as described in this book.
John Demjanjuk, whose conviction of crimes against humanity was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 as a result of new evidence pointing to another Ukrainian as the infamous “Ivan the Terrible,” was eventually deported from the U.S. in 2009 to Germany and tried in Munich on charges of participating in the killing of thousands of Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland in 1943. He was convicted, sentenced to five years in prison, and was appealing his guilty verdict while residing in a nursing home in Germany when he died at the age of 91 from natural causes.
Between the years of 1940-1944, the Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis in the organized deportation of some 76,000 Jews to German concentration camps. It should be mentioned that a segment of the French population objected to this policy, and allied themselves with the Resistance to fight against the German occupation and the persecution of the Jews. History has recorded numerous examples of French citizens risking their lives for this purpose. To learn more about these events, the author recommends the following volumes:
Finkielkraut, Alain. Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity. Trans. Roxanne Lapidus with Sima Godfrey. New York, Columbia University Press, 1992.
Marrus, Michael R. and Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France and the Jews. New York, Basic Books, 1981.
Morgan, Ted. An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Barbie Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940-1945. New York, William Morrow and Co., 1990.
Paris, Erna. Unhealed Wounds. New York, Grove Press, 1985.