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The carnage of World War Two was unleashed because of those who wanted peace at any cost. They deliberately refused to believe Hitler's plans as detailed on his book Mein Kampf, or My Struggle. These days liberals refuse to believe those who warn of Islam's expansionist, supremacist, and brutal nature, as clearly exposed in the Koran's own words. By coincidence, the word Jihad translates as "struggle".
The author's narrative is presented as the story of a family's heroism and resistance. As a reader I saw the drama of how one woman's selfishness brought suffering and tragedy to her husband and child.
"Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris" by Alex Kershaw
The author's narrative is presented as the story of a family's heroism and resistance. As a reader I saw the drama of how one woman's selfishness brought suffering and tragedy to her husband and child.
Imagine Toquette, almost thirty years old, a Swiss nurse living in Paris, not attractive at all, and at 28 years old already a spinster, who luckily meets a tall and ruggedly handsome American doctor, Sumner Jackson, a good man. There are four photographs of her on this book and in all of them she has her head lowered, frowning, looking up, her lips pursed in anger, as if furious about something. She looks like that even in happy times while on the beach with her husband and a puppy, and in another photo with her husband and small child.
But inexplicably he falls in love with her and marries her. It was the late twenties and the thirties in Europe and things were rather unsettling, so he takes her to the United States to live a peaceful life as a doctor's wife. But she hates it in America. What was it in Paris that she missed so much in these tumultuous times? Who knows.
Back in France the situation is extremely hard for Sumner, who must study medicine all over again to be allowed to work as a doctor in France. Imagine the sacrifice, the wasted years of study. All for Toquette, because he loves her, while she hates America.
They have a child, Phillip, a beautiful boy. But that's still not a good enough reason for her to leave Paris for a safer life in the USA. No. She makes her husband and child stay even as the Nazis invade France.
They stay even as the United States gets involved in the war and the family is liable to be rounded up and interned at any time. They stay. Because she loves Paris or something in that city that she can't give up.
They stay even as the United States gets involved in the war and the family is liable to be rounded up and interned at any time. They stay. Because she loves Paris or something in that city that she can't give up.
They live right inside the maw of the enemy, in the elegant Avenue Foch, where the Gestapo and other Nazi agencies of persecution and torture were located just meters away from the Jacksons' home.
They stayed, while Sumner worked as a surgeon at the American Hospital in Paris and the city starved. They stayed even as Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps. They stayed. Because she wanted to.
They stayed, while Sumner worked as a surgeon at the American Hospital in Paris and the city starved. They stayed even as Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps. They stayed. Because she wanted to.
In the meantime, not finding all that risk and wartime hardship enough for the family, in the summer of 1943 Toquette agrees to join the resistance and gets her husband embroiled in it too. Agents come and go using the doctor's home as a center for exchanging messages. Sometimes Sumner helps a ring that hides downed Allied airmen to be later on smuggled out across the border and into safety. All that within meters of Nazi agencies of police, espionage and torture on Avenue Foch.
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