Description:
An illuminating translation of the journal of Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers, a former teacher and forced laborer, Passing Misery documents Pasquiers' life within war-torn Europe, in unwilling service to the Nazi regime. In doing so, this book offers an unrivalled insight into the reality of collaboration and culpability during war.
Brief description:
Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers was born in 1920 and grew up in northeastern France. He was just beginning his career as a secondary school teacher when World War II broke out. In 1943, Pasquiers was requisitioned to go work in Germany with the Service du Travail Obligatoire. After evading capture for several months, Pasquiers turned himself in at a labor office and was deported to Berlin, where he worked a clerical job for the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG). Pasquiers was repatriated to France in the summer of 1945, where he took up teaching again, dedicating his educational career to facilitating French-German student exchanges. Pasquiers died in 2013 in southwestern France.