The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground

By Justus Rosenberg

A gripping memoir written by a 96-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor about his escape from Nazi-occupied Poland in the 1930's and his adventures with the French Resistance during World War II

In 1937, as the Nazi Party tightened its grip on the city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), Justus Rosenberg’s parents made the wrenching decision to send their son to Paris, where he would have the hope of finishing high school and going on to university in safety. He was sixteen years old, and he would not see his family again for sixteen years more.

Even after war broke out in 1939, life in France was peaceful for a time—but when the Nazis pushed toward Paris in the spring of 1940, Justus was forced to flee south to Toulouse. There, a chance meeting put Justus in contact with Varian Fry, the American journalist who ran a refugee network that aided several thousand Jews in escaping Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. With his German background, understanding of French cultural, and fluency in several languages, including English, Justus was ideally positioned to thrive in Fry’s network, coming to master an underworld of counterfeit documents, whispered passwords, black market currency, opportunistic gangsters, and clandestine mountain passes. Justus would spend the rest of the war working for Fry and later the French Resistance, helping to provide safe passage for many intellectuals and artists on the run from the Nazis, among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, and Max Ernst. Along the way, he would have a number of close scrapes of his own: on one occasion, he was rounded up to be sent to a labor camp in Poland, and had to make a daring escape to save his life; on another, he narrowly survived after his jeep hits a landmine.

An epic saga of survival, with the soul of a spy thriller, The Art of Resistance is also an uplifting story of personal triumph. (Several years after the war, Justus was finally able to track down his family, who he feared had died at the Nazis’ hands.) As Justus writes, “I survived the war through a rare combination of good fortune, resourcefulness, optimism, and, most important, the kindness of many good people.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jan 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780008306038

Justus Rosenberg

JUSTUS ROSENBERG (1921-2021) was born in Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland), in 1921. Graduating from the Sorbonne, in Paris, he worked with the French underground for four years and then served in the United States Army. For his wartime service, Rosenberg received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. For seventy years, he taught at American universities; most recently as professor emeritus of languages and literature at Bard College, where he was on faculty for fifty years. He is the cofounder of the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation, which works to combat anti-Semitism. In 2017 the French ambassador to the United States personally made Rosenberg a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, among France’s highest decorations, for his heroism during World War II.

Reviews for The Art of Resistance

[addunn3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting look at WWII from a resistor of the Nazis in France.

[carolee888 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Prologue of this book is the best part of the whole book. Justice Rosenberg had slipped out of one line at a Nazi internment camp and wandered over to a very long time. He found out that it was for prisoners who wanted to see a doctor for their ailments. He thought maybe it would be an easier way to escape! He questioned a young woman who was able to tell him what kind of diseases are so serious that he would have to be admitted. He knew how to heat up a thermometer and he had acting experience to feign pain. It worked. But the next morning, he woke up to find that the doctor had operated on him for appendicitis!The next part on the one page prologue was even more exciting and surprising. I think I read the Prologue four times!Unfortunately the rest of the book winds around and around his story. I was very interested in his parents but not so much in his social life with his friends in college. There was much of that in his book and not enough depth about his feeling of not knowing it his parents were still alive. The author has had a very long and meaningful life. I just wish that he had a good writer alongside him to ask questions. His experiences in the French Resistance were amazing but I think more questions from another person at his side would made his experiences much more memorable. His life is amazing but his story meanders.I received an Advanced Review Copy from the publisher as a win from FirstReads. My thoughts and views are entirely my own.

[juju2cat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating look into his experiences during WWII as a resistance fighter. The story flows effortlessly, like words on ice. It was a "confluence of circumstances" that led him into that life and out of it as well.