Bidspirit auction | “The Barrier Removed” - After

“The Barrier Removed” - After Four Years of Silence. Paris, 1945 - First edition. Numbered copy - “They committed no crime other than belonging to the Jewish race...” - “Le Baillon Dénoué – Après quatre ans de silence” - “The Barrier Removed – After Four Years of Silence” by the resistance activist François Mauriac, published by Bernard Grasset, Paris 1945 - First edition. On the atrocities committed by the Nazis and the collaboration of France with Adolf Hitler. Copy no. 146 out of 216 copies issued. Extremely rare. On the front endpaper, an ownership inscription from 1945. A collection of articles and essays written by Mauriac and published during the war under a pseudonym in the weekly Carrefour and in the journal France U.R.S.S. The title “After Four Years of Silence” refers to the period of the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (1940–1944). During the years of occupation, Mauriac, who was a fierce opponent of Nazism and of the Vichy regime, was forced to write under various pen names (such as “Forez”) in underground publications of the French Resistance. With the liberation of Paris in 1944, “the barrier was removed, ” and Mauriac published them here under his real name and in his own voice. In his essays, Francis gave voice to those tortured under the yoke of Nazism, raised his voice against antisemitism, wrote against the collaboration of the Vichy regime with Nazi Germany, and more. Among other things, one finds here vivid descriptions of the months preceding the liberation of France, when he wrote, “Thirty meters separate me from liberated France, ” and described the roadsides where boys and women were shot to death by the last SS men: “The eyes of these dead remain open upon Paris in these days of glory...”. Among other things, he called for justice to be carried out against the Nazis and their helpers even before the end of the war, protested the loss of freedom of the press in France, and more. In a special chapter titled “The Camp of Slow Death, ” he presents the detailed testimony of Jean-Jacques Bernard describing the horrifying starvation of the Jews in the Compiègne camp: “Thin bodies, burdened with the same physiological suffering... defenseless against vermin, covered with wounds that will not heal... These French Jews, almost all prominent figures, belonged to the bar association, the Court of Auditors, to medicine and to literature. Some of them had honored their country. They committed no crime other than belonging to the Jewish race. Alongside their killing day after day, they were regarded as experimental subjects and experiments were carried out on them...”, and he expresses hope for a Europe that would know how to build a true “new order” of peace and justice in the defeat of Nazism and the victory of freedom. Mauriac became a member of the Académie Française (as noted beneath his name on the cover: de l’Académie Française) and one of the most important moral voices in 20th-century France. Extremely rare. Only one copy is recorded in the WorldCat global library catalog, in a library in Boston. 287 [1] pages. Minor stains to the spine. Good condition.