Ninette's War: A Jewish Story of Survival in 1940s France - John Jay

The moving, poignant true story of a young Jewish girl coming of age in France during World War II, as the Holocaust approaches. \nThis is the heart-wrenching true story of a young Jewish girl coming of age in France during World War II. \n \nNinette Dreyfus belonged to one of the most influential Jewish families in Paris--second only to the Rothschilds--her parents' social circle ranging from Einstein to Colette. But all that privilege counted for nothing when the Nazis arrived; the family was high up on the list of Philippe Petain's targets. \n \nComposed through diary entries and conversations the author had with Ninette before she died, Ninette's War narrates the family's fall from grace alongside the creeping understanding of the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis. Through Ninette's eyes we witness how it all unfolded: from the anti-Semitism in the playground--sometimes from her own teachers--to Ninette's first crush under a false identity. \n \nWoven into the political backdrop of a nation turning inward on itself, this is the tale of a life once filled with riches becoming rootless, where friends were left behind and politicians legislated their own people out of existence--and to their deaths--culminating in what we now know as the Holocaust.\n