Join us for an evening talk with two authors exploring their new works on the experiences of Jews in wartime France.
Ninette's War - A Jewish Story of Survival in 1940s France is the story of a Jewish girl coming of age in France during World War II. Ninette Dreyfus belonged to one of France’s most influential Jewish families — second only to the Rothschilds — her parents’ social circle ranging from Einstein to Colette. But privilege counted for nothing when the Nazis arrived and Pétain’s Vichy regime embraced their racist agenda. Inspired by diary entries and by conversations John Jay had with Ninette before she died, Ninette's War narrates the family's fall from grace.
Through Ninette’s eyes, we witness how it unfolded: from the anti-Semitism in the playground — sometimes from her own teachers — to Ninette’s first crush under a false identity. Woven 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 politicians legislated their own people out of existence — and to their deaths in the Holocaust.
Two Sisters is a riveting, poignant account of two young women—the author’s own mother-in-law, and her sister—and their miraculous escape from the murderous authorities of Vichy France. 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. Her discoveries raise deep moral questions about France’s Holocaust, with urgent resonance for today’s politics.
About the speakers
John Jay is development partner of Brompton Asset Management. Having read modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford, John became a journalist. In addition to Ninette’s War, his books include The New Tycoons, 1989, (with Judi Bevan), and Facing Fearful Odds: my father’s story of captivity, escape and resistance, 1940-45, 2014. He lives in London with his family.
Rosie Whitehouse is a Journalist and Author specialising in Holocaust history. She writes for the BBC, The Observer, Tablet, The Jewish Chronicle and Haaretz.
