Outwitting the Gestapo

Lucie Aubrac (1912-2007), of Catholic and peasant background, was teaching history in a Lyon girls' school and newly married to Raymond, a Jewish engineer, when World War II broke out and divided France. The couple, living in the Vichy zone, soon joined the Resistance movement in opposition to the Nazis and their collaborators.Outwitting the Gestapois Lucie's harrowing account of her participation in the Resistance: of the months when, though pregnant, she planned and took part in raids to free comradesincluding her husband, under Nazi death sentencefrom the prisons of Klaus Barbie, the infamousButcher of Lyon. Her book is also the basis for the 1997 French movie,Lucie Aubrac, which was released in the United States in 1999.

The translator, Konrad Bieber, is an emeritus professor of French and comparative literature at SUNY, Stony Brook, and a survivor of Nazi Terror. The introducer is Margaret Collins Weitz, professor of humanities and languages at Suffolk University in Boston.