Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
by Marthe Cohn, Wendy Holden
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Book Summary Information
Author: Marthe Cohn, Wendy HoldenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-03-28
ISBN: 0307335909
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Book Reviews of Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
Book Review: Stereotyping or sweeping guilt by association is illogical
Summary: 5 Stars
As a Holocaust survivor, I have often heard the comment"you were cowards" not resisting the brutalities perpetrated by the Germans. Many Jews in Palestine, (the Yishuv in 1945-1948) were acrimonious, questioning the Holocaust survivors: "why did you let the Germans lead you like sheep to slaughter houses?" Not being a captive in a concentration camp, Marthe Cohn could join the French Resistance. Courage or cowardice depends on the surrounding circumstances. For detainees behind barbed-wire it was not possible to fight back. In one camp, my uniform did not even have pockets. We had nothing to fight with. To fight off armed men with bare hands would be suicidal. In some instances, where a slight chance to fight the Germans did exist, Jews did resist. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 is one example. Marthe Cohn is another manifestation of Jewish courage and bravery. When the war ended, Marthe was told that she would be rewarded with the Gold Star and 25,000 francs for her work for intelligence in Germany. Marthe response was: "I don't want the monetary reward. I don't want to make money out of what happened. It would be wrong to accept." What a humble and noble attitude! Eventually, in the year 2000, at the age of eighty, Marthe Cohn was awarded France's highest military honor, the Medaille Militaire for outstanding military service.
Marthe Cohn, was imbued with beauty of soul and body. She had a profound sense of justice and resentment for French anti-Semites and Nazi racists. As a little girl, she was listening to her brother's reading about the pogroms carried out by Russian Cossacks against its Jewish population. She was appalled to learn what some people could do to others, just because they were Jewish. At the age of five, several teenagers threw stones at her, shouting "Dirty Jews." She couldn't believe that Jews were being treated differently just for being Jewish. "What did it mater which faith we practiced?" Marthe once asked her father. When the German had occupied France, Marthe and her family tried to escape from their gravitational home to the unoccupied part of France. At one juncture, she asked a priest, who lived at the border area, to help her family to find a path to other side of the border. The priest said "I'll help you because it is the right thing to do. But you should know...I never trust a Jew." Because of the biblical story of Judas Iscariot's behavior, thousands of years ago, a Jew today can not be trusted? At a nursing school in France, Marthe was told "I just don't want any Jews in my school." In the French Army, a captain made a sarcastic remark about his colleague "Neu did bloody well for a Jew". (p.162). The captain said that in Marthe's presence, who had never revealed her religion to colleagues in the Army. When the war ended, Marthe searched for her sister Stephanie. Calling the Red Cross for help to locate Stephanie, Marthe was told:"We are not in the business of tracing lost Jews (p 217)."
As a young boy, growing up in Poland I was harassed by Catholic kids with epithet "Jesus Killer". I was aware of rampant anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. Anti-Semitic incidents in Christian Western Europe come vividly to light in BEHIND ENEMY LINES. Being affected by it personally it is sometimes too much to bear. It is chaffing; stereotyping or sweeping guilt by association is illogical. Readers of this excellent book will agree that old hostilities should be reduced to rubble. We can all sing together with different voices in a very successful choir.
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