ram net

Growing up in France to 39-45 was a constant struggle for Jewish children, and this is tackled by Paul Bëck in this novel that imagines a happy enriched personal experience, in part autobiographical. Living in Paris with the rest of his family of Hungarian origin, Paul is sent to the province when raids began. To be collected in three unmarried sisters in a small village, Paul must take the place of a missing child and conceal her identity as a religion. It will then Daniel Descamps.

In the village, Daniel began to be known and appreciated by all, and when the Germans moved to occupy the place, they take more or less affection in this small boy with blond hair and blue eyes. Taking advantage of this total indifference towards him, Daniel grow in the insouciance alongside Lucia, an orphan fifteen years living among three sisters.

When the war is approaching the end, resistance is increasingly solid at the same time it is being undermined by the Germans. Between visiting his father who travels illegally to risk his life to come and see, and the original inhabitants shot resistance, Paul will soon not see the true face of war and occupation. The German parties, he discovered the lifeless body of Lucia in a barn. Fifteen years later, he decided to return to the village to discover the truth.

Halfway between the novel and autobiography, P’tit Paul is a personal expedition in occupied France and a trip intimate secrets in the family that everyone thought buried. By confronting the protagonists still alive in their past, Paul Bëck reveals intelligence with all that chaos of war will be allowed to conceal.