Eight days that freed Paris [antikvár]

FOREWORD FOR four years, French pens and presses either had to satisfy the requirements of the Germans or else go underground. For the most literate nation in the world, tliis was a severe hardship. Then came the liberation by the allies, in which the French people took so notable a part. The most dramatic episode in the liberation was the rising in Paris, when writers and artists and cameramen worked side by side with the F.F.I, in an outburst of creative and liberating energy. This book is essentially a product of those stirring days, thrown off at white heat with no time for reflection or the leisurely researches of the historian. The writer, Claude Roy, was himself caught up in the storm that broke all over Paris in the manner traditional to that city. The artist, Jean Reschofsky, made his brilliant sketches in the thick of the fighting. The book was printed on the clandestine presses of the underground resistance movement and published in Paris while the events it described were still fresh in Parisian memories, and eagerly read by people who wanted to be told every detail about their revolt and its leaders. "Colonel Rol", the unknown man who came to the fore as commander of the F.F.I, in the Paris region, gave the author of this book a personal account of himself up to and during the liberation. This adds to the value of an enthralling piece of reportage, in a style which