Jenny’s Story is the powerful
retelling of a Jewish mother’s
survival during the Nazi occupation
of France and her steadfast resolve
to protect her daughter — even long
after the war ended. Though the
story is inextricably tied to the
Holocaust, its themes of identity,
discrimination and resilience
transcend time and place. Written by
Michèle Sarde, the daughter Jenny
was protecting, Returning from
Silence has received the WIZO France
award, is now on the list at CLMP
for Jewish Book Month and will be
presented at London’s Jewish Book
Week on March 5, 2023.
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Returning from
Silence: Jenny’s Story from author
Michèle Sarde is an intimate,
first-person retelling of a mother’s
unwavering determination to conceal
her Jewish identity from the Nazis
and to protect the life of her
daughter, born at the onset of World
War II.
The story seamlessly interweaves the
personal history of Jenny, her
daughter Michou and their
Judeo-Hispanic family from Salonica
with acutely contemporary themes of
concealed identity, assimilation and
persecution, the women’s struggle
for emancipation and the German
occupation of France, all told
poignantly, with flashes of dark
humor.
The daughter Jenny was protecting
was just a little girl when her
family found themselves, during the
Nazi occupation of France, in the
midst of the Vercors Maquis (a
resistance spot) in the summer of
1944. It was their near-miraculous
escape that drove Jenny to conceal
her origins and impose that
“silence” on her daughter. But, just
like the original Marranos, the Jews
of Spain who converted 500 years ago
but couldn’t hide their faith for
long, so Michou, late in the story,
is forced to confront her true
identity, and in so doing prevails
on her aging mother to recount her
own story.
Though technically a novel with
editorial flourishes to bring
characters to life and to fill gaps,
Returning from Silence is thoroughly
researched and enveloped in
historical accuracies.
“My mother supplied the basic
material for the story,” Sarde
explained in an interview. “She
wrote an account and entrusted me
with all the records she had kept
during the war, including the
photographs I used in the book. I
didn’t start to write until after
her death to avoid any possible
discomfort to her.”
Sarde, who was raised Catholic, grew
up knowing little of her family’s
past. Her desire to reconstruct her
family’s history resulted in a
three-volume memoir, the first of
which is Returning from Silence.
About the Author
Michèle Sarde is a French writer and
professor emerita at Georgetown
University, where she taught French
literature, gender studies and
intercultural studies. The key
themes of her work, for which she
has won several literary awards, are
women’s causes, intercultural issues,
the interaction between history and
individual destinies, and the
interweaving of personal and
historical memory. Her books have
been translated into several
languages and given rise to academic
studies, in particular her novel
Histoire d’Eurydice pendant la
remontée (Eurydice rising) She holds
the Palmes académiques, the Order of
Arts and Letters and the Order of
National Merit — decorations awarded
by the French Government. Sarde has
written biographies of Colette and
Marguerite Yourcenar, and is
co-editor of the latter’s
correspondence. She has also written
a biography of Jacques Rossi, a
survivor of the Soviet Gulag. As an
essayist, she is the author of two
volumes on the history and sociology
of women in France as well as
numerous academic articles. As a
novelist, her most recent work is a
cycle of remembrance devoted to her
families — from the Ottoman Empire
to the Holocaust — aiming to bring
back to this world the lost who have
marked her life and left traces of
themselves in her books.
www.michelesarde.com
Returning from Silence: Jenny’s
Story
Publisher: Swan Isle Press
Translated by Rupert Swyer
ISBN: 978-1736189306