This book is the chronicle of a family's survival: my mother and my mother-in-law struggles and miracle survival during WWII in France. The stories told in this book stem from a promise I made to my mother, Renee Holzer-Englander-Besnainou, in 1977 when I was only 13 and she was losing her battle against breast cancer at the young age of 41. At a tender age, from four to eight years old, she lived through a terrifying and inexplicable ordeal provoked by the willful blindness of a government gone mad. She was rescued thanks to the miraculous intervention of simple and courageous people who...

Fulfilling a promise made to his mother when he was a child and she was losing her battle against cancer, Jacques Besnainou tells her story as a "hidden" child in France during World War II. He chronicles the struggles and survival of two families: his mother's and his mother-in-law's. Both lived through a terrifying ordeal provoked by the willful blindness of a government gone mad. And both were rescued thanks to the miraculous intervention of courageous people who listened to their conscience and challenged the established order, often at the expense of their own lives. In 1940, about...