Ninette Dreyfus was a cosseted scion of one of France’s most prominent Jewish families; cousin to Albert Einstein and family friend to Colette. But when the Second World War broke out and the Germans occupied Paris, the fall was dramatic. Realising that her fate would be transformed, the teenager soon found herself fleeing the capital for the South, only to fall prey to the Vichy regime. Facing mortal danger from Nazis and French collaborators alike, she assumed a new identity to survive. Woven together from Ninette’s own diaries and late-life interviews with John Jay, the acclaimed Ninette’s War traces the frailty of national and personal unity through the eyes of a young woman, in compelling and unforgettable detail. The author of Facing Fearful Odds and The New Tycoons joins Anne Sebba to discuss.
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