Star Crossed

July 1, 2023
A novelistic nonfiction account of romance amid the terror of the Holocaust. In this intimate story of love and loss, Dune Macadam, author of 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz, and Worrall, author of The Poet and the Murderer, tell the tale of 19-year-old Annette Zelman, who arrived with her family in Paris as refugees from the provinces shortly after the Germans invaded in 1940. Set to begin school at the Beaux-Arts, "the most famous art school in all of France," in January 1941, she anticipated a glorious artistic career within the booming surrealist and Dadaist movements. She befriended a circle of young activist artists and poets--Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and other members of "the in-crowd"--who frequented the Caf� de Flore. Zelman fell in love with the poet and explorer Jean Jausion, known for his work with Les R�verb�res, an artistic group that "produced both Surrealist and Dada theater--events a bit like the Happenings of the 1960s--as well as beautifully de-signed graphic magazines." As the Nazis began to restrict Jewish movement and participation in society, the Zelman family, well-known Jewish clothiers, had to flee in secret to Limoges. Annette stayed in Paris and moved in with Jausion, making plans for their wedding without realizing the extent of the Jausion family's antisemitism and collaboration with the Germans. Arrested for the political crime of planning to marry a gentile, she was sent to Auschwitz with many of her young artist friends. The authors re-create this poignant story from more than 80 letters and works of art that Annette's sister inherited. Though the prose is occasionally overheated, the tale of Zelman and Jausion deserves to be preserved. An interesting postscript, "A Biographical Roundup of Some People Mentioned in the Book," concludes the text. A worthwhile addition to Holocaust literature focused on young artists navigating occupied Paris.

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Starred review from August 18, 2023

During the German occupation of Paris, painters, writers, and philosophers continued to produce art, while young adults found ways to resist and survive. Macadam (999) and Worrall (The Very White of Love) delve into the love story of Annette Zelman, a young French Jewish girl and art student at the prestigious �cole des Beaux-Arts, and her boyfriend Jean Jausion, a Catholic poet and member of the Surrealist artist group Les R�verb�res. The pair met in the famed Caf� de Flore, where they were surrounded by influential artists and writers. As Nazi restrictions on Jews tightened, the couple planned to marry, believing it would provide a modicum of protection. After an informant betrayed Zelman, she is swept into the hell of German concentration camps. Jausion joined the French Resistance and was killed searching for Zelman, just as the war neared its end. This harrowing story of love lost is based on interviews and a personal archive of letters and sketches bequeathed to Zelman's sister, Michele, which gives the story a sense of immediacy and relays the human cost of the war. VERDICT Readers interested in World War II, French history, the arts, and stories of true love will enjoy this title.--Chad E. Statler

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 4, 2023
Historian Macadam (999) and journalist Worrall (The Poet and the Murderer) offer a poignant account of the doomed WWII love affair between Annette Zelman, a Jewish student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and Jean Jausion, a Catholic poet. Zelman, who was born in 1921 in Alsace-Lorraine, had moved with her family to Paris in 1940. There she got involved with Surrealist and Dadaist social scenes, and fell for the like-minded Jausion. Born in 1917, Jausion was the son of a well-off family; his father, a doctor and collaborationist, made an official complaint about the couple’s engagement. When the report reached Theodor Dannecker, the SS officer appointed as “Jewish Advisor” of Paris, he had Zelman arrested and immediately introduced a new law banning intermarriage. Jausion’s father then attempted to negotiate Zelman’s release on the condition that she renounce her intention to marry his son, but she refused; eventually, she was deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942. Jausion, a member of the French Resistance, went missing during a fight on the front lines in 1944 and was presumed dead. Drawing on Zelman’s letters, drawings, and diaries, the authors paint an exceptionally vivid portrait of the couple, conveying both their happy courtship and Zelman’s grim struggle for survival in Auschwitz. The result is an evocative depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust.