This journal provides accounts of bravery and dignity in the face of the constant cruelty of Nazi Germans and their collaborators. Our generation would do well to observe their example. I am only 2/3's done as I write this review. ( )

In the summer of 1940 Agnes Humbert watches her beloved Paris become overrun by invading Germans. She like most Parisians at the time can hardly believe what is happening and feels demoralized to see her city become a home for Nazis and their supporters. Suddenly French soldiers become the play thing of the German army and the citizens of France are subjected to new levels of humiliation. But Agnes had always been a woman of action and decides along with some of her friends and colleagues to resist in whatever way possible. Since many of them were intellectuals and had always found solace in the written word, they begin a newspaper, Resistance, which they use as an anti Nazi tool. The rapidity with which the paper is formed and takes off is almost hard to believe. Agnes and her friends seem like little children setting up a private club. But since they lack other avenues through which to protest the collapse of their society, the written word becomes their ally.

Unfortunately for Agnes, she is betrayed by one of their number. She is picked up by German soldiers and after spending some time in a French jail, she is deported to Germany. It is in Germany that she faces horrors almost unimaginable. She is fed very little food, given improper clothing and despite the biting cold, her shoes can barely get her around. Brutality and inhumane treatment reign supreme. When human beings are allowed power unchecked, embrace their baser instincts and this held very true in this prison. She and the other women are forced to work in a factory that had such harmful chemicals that at one time or another almost all the women would lose their eye sight for a few days at a time. The wardresses and soldiers were for the most part cruel and harsh and would find excuses to punish the prisoners. In one incident, the wardress refuses the women water for three to four days because of some perceived offense. The women were forced to drink the water from the toilet.

But despite these horrors, Agnes still manages to find points of happiness and has a biting sense of humor. Once when she had the flu, she asked the wardress for an aspirin. The wardress gives her one aspirin. Unfortunately, Agnes was not cured by the next day and when she asks the wardress for another aspirin, she is punched in the stomach and sent flying down the stairs. Her response "I spent the rest of the day reflecting on German remedies for flu". She gains a small measure of happiness from sabotaging the products she is forced to produce. The incidents of sabotage may be small but they serve as sources of strength.

The book is generally very well written and keeps you engaged. It is written in the form of a journal with the first part of it written before her imprisonment. The vast majority of the book was written from memory after she had been released. One problem I had with the book was that in the beginning she mentioned so many friends and acquaintances that I lost track of who was who. A very good read. ( )

I came across Agnés Humbert's Résistance completely by accident while browsing the "New in Hardcover" section in Barnes & Noble one day, but rarely have I been more grateful for following my instincts on an unfamiliar book and author. From the moment I picked it up this book has haunted me. Too compelling to put down, but too harrowing to read straight through without breaks to recover emotionally, reading this book became a delicious struggle between my need to continue and my desire to stop and reflect.

Résistance begins with Agnés Humbert's actual journal entries from the summer of 1940 and the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Paris. She describes the conception and birth of the French Resistance from a completely new point of view, almost as if it was a game she and her friends invented to annoy the Nazis. But it is the very casual way in which she describes certain horrors that brings home to the reader the atrocities of the Nazi occupiers. Her descriptions of the bravery, strength and loyalty of her compatriots brought tears to my eyes.

The later portion of the book, after Humbert's arrest, are also written in journal form, but these entries were written just after her release when the war ended. She writes "my memories are so clear that I am able to commit them to paper as they happened and in strict sequence. I remember everything as clearly as though it were written in notebooks". This portion of the book is truly an intimate look into the life of a prisoner of war, and you get the impression that as gut-wrenching as Agnés' experiences are, she actually got off somewhat easily compared to the treatment of so many other prisoners in Nazi camps.

Now that I've told you how clear she is in expressing the horrors of war, I need to tell you how very hopeful Humbert's book is. Although the tears flowed freely while reading many passages, the bleakness never took over, and often my tears were tears of admiration for a woman who was oppressed in so many ways, both physical and spiritual, and yet was still able to resist in any small way she could what she knew to be evil. You could not ask for a better narrator, a better guide through the unbelievable cruelties and unexpected kindnesses of the Nazi prison camps.

Humbert's journal/book covers the time period from just before the Nazi occupation of Paris to the end of the war and the American liberation of the prison camps in Germany. It is not a comprehensive view of the entirety of WWII, but it's not meant to be. It is one woman's harrowing and hopeful experience of losing her certainty in her country's leaders, but keeping her confidence in the spirit of her nation. ( )

This is a firsthand account of a woman living in occupied Paris during WWII who was a member of the French resistance. She was eventually arrested, imprisoned and then deported to Germany to work in a labor camp where she continued to act as a strong, supportive presence to other women prisoners and fought the Nazis as best she could by sabotaging her work whenever possible. What surprised me most about this story (which is beautifully told) was how Humbert's wit and spirited humor stayed with her even through some of her darkest moments. It was truly a riveting read, and all of it was true! ( )

Résistance
By
Agnés Humbert
(Translated from the French by Barbara Mellor)
Published by Bloomsbury 2008 - 370 pps $26.00
Agnés Humbert (1894-1963)
Humbert was born in Dieppe, France, the daughter of French army officer Charles Humbert and English author Mabel Wells Annie Rooke. She spent her childhood in Paris, where she studied painting and design. In 1916 she married the Egyptian artist Georges Hanna Sabbagh (1877-1951), by whom she had two sons: Jean Sabbagh, a sub-mariner and advisor to General de Gaulle, and television director and producer Pierre Sabbagh. From 1929, she studied the history of art at the Sorbonne and at the Louvre school, and took a course in philosophy. Agnès and Georges divorced in 1934. Her first book was on the painter Louis David, published in 1936. She then worked as an Art historian at the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, and broadcast on art on Radio Paris at the start of 1936. She was 46 when her story begins.
Apparently, this work was first published in France in 1946 as Notre Guerre. Translation into English, and sale in the USA has taken 62 years: and I can understand why. Humbert’s book has so many qualifications; they almost exceed the work itself. There is an introduction; a 33 page ‘translators notes’; and a 36 page ‘afterword’ which is essentially a book report. If one reads that first, there is little point in reading the book. There are 16 pages of ‘appendix’ together with a comprehensive ‘index’, ‘bibliography’ and notes on the author and translator. Phew!
If a diary needs all that explanation, shouldn’t we be suspicious of the credibility of it? Well, it’s not exactly a diary. The first 54 pages are contemporaneous notes, but the rest is from memory – or might that be imagination? The book was written in 1946 a time when Europe in general and France in particular, had been devastated by the Germans. One would have expected more venom from Humbert that is apparent here. This is my problem with the work. It doesn’t ring true.
Madam Humbert describes the most frightful deprivations that she was a victim of, but it seems to have little effect on her. At the same time that she is being starved, frozen and beaten, she describes in erotic terms her fellow female prisoners. At the drop of a hat she strips naked and dances around the room to demonstrate her thinness (or something), to fellow prisoners. She mentions inmates copulating under machines and getting in trouble for it. Not inmates copulating with guards for various benefits, but inmates coupling with inmates. In between being starved, frozen, beaten and having acid poured on them as they go blind – they pop under a machine in full view of everyone including guards, for a quick tumble.
It is clear that Humbert is a rabid communist, and I suspect homosexual. It may be that people of that persuasion have a different libido to the rest of us. It will come as no surprise to married men that there are occasions when a headache can be an obstacle to sexual satisfaction, never mind being starved, frozen etc.
I was also astonished by the resilience of her and her fellow prisoners. She describes in the detail a manufacturing procedure that requires the use of corrosive acid. No protective clothing is supplied and the acid regularly assaults their bodies causing gruesome wounds. It also causes blindness. No medical treatment worth the name is offered, so they ‘self-medicate’ by picking at the wounds and urinating on them. This does not seem to incapacitate them. Indeed a couple of the inmates attempted suicide by drinking a ‘tumbler’ of acid. This same acid burns through to the bone. This kills them of course – no, it doesn’t! The guards gave them a quick swig of antidote, and they were right as nine pence. One woman had a serious heart condition but none of the above killed her.
I live in Naples SW Florida, known as God’s waiting room. Every medical treatment known to man is available here to the many heart patients, but they drop like flies. How could someone who starts sick survive such treatment?
The agony continues with no respite until the end of the war (five years), and the Americans arrive at Humbert’s prison. At this point, I would have expected her to be carried off on a stretcher to an American Military hospital for treatment for her blindness, black frostbitten feet, emaciation, burns and general mistreatment, and a long period of recovery and rehabilitation. Err – No, she immediately becomes in charge of the town administration, local prison camps and the provision of shelter, food and first aid to refugees. Moreover, in her spare time she is the official Nazi hunter for the Americans. What a woman. If she had headed up the French Army instead of a department in the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires the Germans would never have reached France.
I love diaries, and I read this at one sitting. I found it a compelling read and, if it contained only a grain of truth it would still be a remarkable story.
This is not a book for everyone, but if ‘women’s struggle against the odds’ is your thing, you will enjoy this work.