"tale of two cities"similarities with "heart has reasons: holocaust rescuers"

I just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and before that I read The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage by Mark Klempner. The interesting thing is that the same kind of espionage, underground operations, dangerous situations and devastating betrayals are found in both books, even though one takes place during the time of the French Revolution and the other takes place during the Holocaust during the Dutch occupation which Anne Frank wrote about so poignantly. I guess whenever there is a Resistance or, to use a more common term, guerilla warfare certain patterns emerge. I just wanted to share this open-ended comment because, to be more specific, Dickens' classic make me think especially of the narrative of Ted Leenders found in Klempner's book. If anyone else has read both books, I'd be interested to hear if you noticed this too. Thanks.

Yeah, I can see what you mean. Also, the sacrifice that lawyer character makes at the end of the Tale of Two Cities makes me think a lot of the kind of sacrifices that some of the rescuers made, such as the resistance leader that Piet Meerburg talks about in the Heart Has Reasons, and also the guy named Vos that Ted Leenders talks about in the last chapter.

By the way, I recently got through War and Peace, the great new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and I was struck by how little warfare really had really changed between 1812 and 1940....many of the passages reminded me of Holocaust narratives that I have read, as well as World War II books. They didn't have the more advanced weapons but, I guess, war is war, and, reading War & Peace definitely leaves you feeling that war is indeed hell.