spoken for

Rating: 10

Behind Enemy Lines is one of the few books I’ve read (so far) that are accounts from during World War II by a Jewish person who was not in a concentration camp or even a ghetto. It is, I believe, the first account I have read of someone of French nationality.

Marthe Cohn was born in 1920 as Martha Hoffnung Gutgluck which, in German, means Hope and Good Luck. The name was shortened to just Hoffnung to make things easier but Marthe’s life was one of both hope and “good luck.” One of eight children, Marthe, a tiny woman, would live to have enough adventure that, seems to me, could last four or five people.

During the war, she not only helped to secure her own family’s future, but took part in helping other families escape the Nazis. When France was liberated, she would enter the French army and end up serving as translator, interrogator, and even spy.

More to come on this…