Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille($22.36Value)

Description

“Rosemary Sullivan goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. . . . A moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times.” — Publishers Weekly Paris 1940. Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, and scores of other cultural elite denounced as enemies of the conquering Third Reich, live in daily fear of arrest, deportation, and death. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille where a group of young people, financed by a private American relief organization, will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive. In Villa Air-Bel, Rosemary Sullivan sheds light on this suspenseful, dramatic, and intriguing story, introducing the brave men and women who use every means possible to stave off the Nazis and the Vichy officials, and goes inside the chateau’s walls to uncover the private worlds and the web of relationships its remarkable inhabitants developed. In France of the 1940s, the Nazis were hunting down artists and intellectuals, the elites who threatened the Third Reich. Many of them, including Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Mann, and Marc Chagall, found temporary shelter in a large nineteenth-century house in a suburb of Marseille, waiting for rescue by courageous members of the American Rescue Committee. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, and letters, Sullivan offers a gripping look at the desperate and joyous days--with artists hanging paintings from trees--as musicians, scientists, and intellectuals waited for the visas that would give them safe passage out of Vichy France. Harvard-educated scholar Varian Fry led the effort, eventually saving 2,000 artists and intellectuals. An American heiress and a graduate student were part of Fry's team, coping with the petty and enlightened arguments of their diverse and brilliant charges. Sullivan captures the tense atmosphere of France as the Germans invaded and the fear and anxiety of the intellectuals, some held in detention camps and some who ignored the danger until it was nearly too late. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Original and disarming . . . right on target.” - Publishers Weekly (starred), Praise for LABYRINTH OF DESIRE “[Sullivan] crafts that intense bond between the reader and her subject.” - The Globe and Mail “Gripping...Sullivan captures the tense atmosphere of France as the Germans invaded and the fear and anxiety of the intellectuals, some held in detention camps and some who ignored the danger until it was nearly too late.” - Booklist “Sullivan’s latest book covers a little-known chapter in the history of the Second World War….Villa Air-Bel is a remarkable achievement.” - National Post (Toronto) “[Sullivan] manages to combine solid scholarship with a snappy writing style, and this makes for a history book that is completely riveting….Villa Air-Bel is a valiant effort to explore and emphasize…the lessons of history.” - Vancouver Sun According to Rosemary Sullivan’s gripping new book, ‘Villa Air-Bel,’ France had become ‘a country trapped in the totalitarian vise of irrational hatred’ with its own government as terrifying as the Nazis….Another hero is the Villa Air-Bel itself, a run-down 18-room mansion in the suburbs of Marseille…Her description of the resident’s attempts at establishing a normal life there—the meals, the improvised games, the passionate discussions—are the heart of this book. - San Francisco Chronicle “[Rosemary Sullivan] goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. She intelligently spreads the fractured narrative, with its huge cast of players constantly coming and going, over 60 brief chapters. What’s palpable is the welter of shock, fear, world-weariness, cynicism and misplaced idealism evinced by the villa’s transient residents as they apprehensively awaited their fate…a moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times.” - Publishers Weekly “As a piece of narrative Villa Air-Bel is considerable. It tells a number of individual stories-about 40-brilliantly and it places them in context. Furthermore, as one would expect, the style is beautifully clear and concise. It also illuminates a little known but important aspect of the history of the second World War….Sullivan’s book should be mandatory reading.” - Irish Times “Sullivan brilliantly interweaves personal histories with terrifying tales about flight over mountains to Spain or Switzerland and by sea to Casablanca or Martinique….At the centre is Varian Fry, the quiet American.” - Sunday Times (London) “Villa Air-Bel is a most welcome book, a triumph of the human spirit.” - Philadelphia Inquirer “A moving and richly detailed account.” - Boston Globe “[Villa Air-Bel] bring[s] to life those committed Americans and Europeans who risked all to help others...A complex tale showing how hope and courage flourish, even in the toxi