"A Terrible and Terribly Interesting Epoch" : The Holocaust Diary of Lucien Dreyfus / [edited by] Alexandra Garbarini, Jean-Marc Dreyfus.

Provides a rare glimpse into the daily life of French and foreign-born Jewish refugees under the Vichy regime during World War II. Long hidden, the diary was written by Lucien Dreyfus, a native of Alsace, who was a teacher at the most prestigious high school in Strasbourg, an editor of the leading Jewish newspaper of Alsace and Lorraine. In 1939, after the French declaration of war on Hitler's Germany, Lucien and his wife, Marthe, were forced by the French state to leave Strasbourg along with thousands of other Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the city. The couple found refuge in Nice, on the Mediterranean coast in the south of France. Anti-Jewish laws prevented Lucien from resuming his teaching career and his work as a newspaper editor. But he continued to write, recording his reflections on the situation of France and French Jews under the Vichy regime. Rounded up during an SS raid in September 1943, Lucien and Marthe were deported and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau two months later.

This trenchant diary provides a rare glimpse into the daily life of French and foreign-born Jewish refugees under the Vichy regime during WWII. Lucien Dreyfus offers readers a unique philosophical and moral reflection on the Holocaust as it was unfolding in France up until he and his wife were deported and murdered in Auschwitz in late 1943.