Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany

by Marthe Cohn

“We are living history,” I told my mother breathlessly one night after the radio had been turned off and we sat in complete silence. “I could do with a little less history, thank you,” she replied crisply and returned to mending some socks. My father just leaned back in his armchair and closed his eyes.

By wearing the star, we were supposed to be ostracized by others in public, but walking in the streets with our yellow badges, whole families from the local Catholic community would very often cross the street deliberately, the men to raise their hats and the women to say hello, all of them voicing their strong

disapproval of the discrimination to which we were subjected.

A single lifetime would never have been long enough to achieve all our plans.

None of us knows how we’d react under torture, but I suspect most of us would crack. You can be a hero one day and a coward the next. I know.

I’ve been both.