Villa Air-Bel : World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille
Author(s): Rosemary Sullivan
“Rosemary Sullivan goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. . . . A moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times.” — Publishers Weekly
Paris 1940. Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, and scores of other cultural elite denounced as enemies of the conquering Third Reich, live in daily fear of arrest, deportation, and death. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille where a group of young people, financed by a private American relief organization, will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive. In Villa Air-Bel, Rosemary Sullivan sheds light on this suspenseful, dramatic, and intriguing story, introducing the brave men and women who use every means possible to stave off the Nazis and the Vichy officials, and goes inside the chateau’s walls to uncover the private worlds and the web of relationships its remarkable inhabitants developed.
Review(s):
“There was an atmosphere of jittery uncertainty and apprehension that Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan captures to chilling effect in ’Villa Air-Bel.’ … Sullivan, a poet and professor of English at the University of Toronto, centers her moving and richly detailed account of that time of anxiety at the villa, which was, she writes, like ‘a stone interrupting the stream,’ a fixed point in a dangerous world.”
“A moving and richly detailed account.”
According to Rosemary Sullivan’s gripping new book, ‘Villa Air-Bel,’ France had become ‘a country trapped in the totalitarian vise of irrational hatred’ with its own government as terrifying as the Nazis….Another hero is the Villa Air-Bel itself, a run-down 18-room mansion in the suburbs of Marseille…Her description of the resident’s attempts at establishing a normal life there—the meals, the improvised games, the passionate discussions—are the heart of this book.
“[Rosemary Sullivan] goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. She intelligently spreads the fractured narrative, with its huge cast of players constantly coming and going, over 60 brief chapters. What’s palpable is the welter of shock, fear, world-weariness, cynicism and misplaced idealism evinced by the villa’s transient residents as they apprehensively awaited their fate…a moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times.”
“[Villa Air-Bel] bring[s] to life those committed Americans and Europeans who risked all to help others...A complex tale showing how hope and courage flourish, even in the toxic soil of totalitarianism.”
“Beautifully written in a style that is novelistic, Villa Air-Bel brings to life the story of this rescue through experiences of a community of artists who spent time in the Villa Air-Bel chateau…The book is interesting and evocative and provides nuances and texture to one of the untold stories of rescue during the Holocaust.”
“With tremendous suspense and emotional pull, Sullivan recounts the little-known story of Varian Fry, the intrepid young American who sheltered [dozens of artists and intellectuals] helping them and hundreds more escape from Vichy France.”
“The great virtue of Sullivan’s account of these dark times is the meticulous research that informs it, the uncovering of memoirs, photos, and other documents in numerous Canadian and American libraries as well as archives in France and private collections….Sullivan’s Villa Air-Bel sings of the good deeds of those heroes of so long ago. It memorializes the great men and women of the rescue team who were bastions of humanity in a time of man’s most shameful display of sadistic cruelty. Villa Air-Bel is a most welcome book, a triumph of the human spirit.”
“Villa Air-Bel is a most welcome book, a triumph of the human spirit.”
“Gripping...Sullivan captures the tense atmosphere of France as the Germans invaded and the fear and anxiety of the intellectuals, some held in detention camps and some who ignored the danger until it was nearly too late.”
ISBN: 9780060732516