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Books

The cold, remote plateau of Vichy France where good was done

A review of Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France, by Caroline Moorehead. Parallel to the squalid map of Vichy was a map of decency

28 June 2014

9:00 AM

28 June 2014

9:00 AM

Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France Caroline Moorehead

Chatto, pp.357, £20, ISBN: 9780701186418

It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome or too familiar, or because — in Solzhenitzyn’s memorable phrase — you need only a mouthful of seawater to know the taste of the ocean. No: my reluctance to contemplate that world, even as a distant spectator, is because it was so awful and the detail so compelling that I’ll be unable to put the book down.

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