Two Sisters

Description

When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Marion and Huguette Müller’s family was torn apart. After their mother was deported to Auschwitz, the two young Jewish women fled to the Alpine skiing town of Val d’Isère, where they were rescued by an incredibly courageous doctor.

Through intrepid reporting, sensitive family interviews, and thousands of records, Rosie Whitehouse traces decades-old mysteries of the Müller sisters’ story, seeking closure and justice for her family and the doctor’s. Why did he shelter them? Who had betrayed their mother? How did this national tragedy happen?

Whitehouse’s discoveries raise deep moral questions about France’s Holocaust, with urgent resonance for today’s politics: questions about French complicity, minority agency, collective culpability, duty to your country and duty to other people. She pieces together not only how the sisters were saved, but how so many others were lost.

From villagers to Vichy officials, antisemitism to resistance, this is a sweeping yet intimate history of French choices before, during and after the Nazi occupation; and a moving, gripping tale of forged documents, narrow escapes, one family’s trauma, and the grace of human connection.

Reviews

‘[An] evocative and wrenching family history.’ — The Wall Street Journal

‘Whitehouse is good at describing the poisonous mixture of xenophobia and racism that infected French society between the wars … Two Sisters is both a tale of rejection, the French turning their backs on the immigrants who had helped to rebuild their country after the First World War, and of kindness.’ — TLS

‘A compelling account of survival and remembrance.’ — Booklist

‘[A] heartrending account… This makes a well-covered historical period feel agonisingly immediate.’ — Publishers Weekly

‘[Whitehouse does an] expert job, [revealing] the shocking progression of France, from the first European country to emancipate Jews, to a place where people denounced, betrayed and helped to murder them.’ — Irish Independent

‘The plight – and resistance – of foreign-born Jews in France during the Holocaust is a subject often overshadowed by that of Germany and the rest of Europe, something which Rosie Whitehouse sets out to remedy in her latest book, Two Sisters.’ — Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine

‘A com­pelling sto­ry of strength, love, and resis­tance, but also of betray­al. It not only tells a per­son­al sto­ry but reminds us of the respon­si­bil­i­ty that we have for one anoth­er and that gov­ern­ments have to pro­tect their citizens.’ — Jewish Book Council

‘The multifaceted Two Sisters … [is] at once a family memoir, a story of cooperation between the French and Jewish Resistance, a history of the Vichy government’s mixed record in collaboration with the Nazis, and an examination of the wartime fissures in French society that have lasted until today.’ — The Times of Israel

‘Rosie Whitehouse’s gripping narrative begins with a poignant portrait of a family torn apart, but soon broadens into searing questions of dispossession and betrayal that haunt European politics to this day. In illuminating the unyielding spirit of those who dared to defy oppression, Whitehouse masterfully renders the enduring light of human courage against the encroaching shadows of tyranny.’ — Benjamin Balint, author of Bruno Schulz, winner of a National Jewish Book Award

‘British journalist Tim Judah was six years old when he asked his mother Marion why she didn’t have a mother. Two Sisters, written by the journalist Rosie Whitehouse (and Tim Judah’s wife) answers that question in a story that reads like a thriller: a family running from the Nazis and their religion, hoping they would find safety in France. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, Two Sisters tells the story of the Holocaust in France through a family caught in the maelstrom.’ — Edward Serotta, journalist, photographer and filmmaker and Founding Director of Centropa

‘Two Sisters is a brilliant meditation on family and trauma across generations, a much-needed critical reappraisal of the Jewish experience in France during the Holocaust, and a reminder of just how complicated and nuanced individual stories can be—even, and perhaps especially, the stories of those we feel we know so well.’ — James McAuley, author of The House of Fragile Things

Author(s)

Rosie Whitehouse, a journalist, writes about Holocaust survivors for BBC Online, the Observer, Tablet magazine, The Jewish Chronicle and Haaretz. She is the author of Two Sisters and The People on the Beach (both published by Hurst), and the Bradt guide to Europe’s Holocaust memorials, museums and sites.