The incredible true story of Ginette, dubbed the “most resistant of all” by her Gestapo interrogators.

"This naive and reckless young girl, who, in the summer of 1944, was taken, handcuffed, to the Gestapo headquarters in Marseille, was the one who, long after, would become my mother. Why had she joined the Resistance? Why, at such a young age, had she decided to face what frightened her the most? How did she fight? What did she keep silent about?

This is a tale of unbridled courage. It is also a love story. Ginette and Jean, the dashing young Jew for whom she faced so many dangers, promised each other that one day they would write their adventures in occupied France among the fury of war and hatred. That book was never written, it is up to me today to fill its pages.”   Nicole Bacharan

Mixing the fate of Ginette with her own journey in the footsteps of her mother, Nicole Bacharan tells the incredible adventure of a young woman in love who fights for freedom.  This story written as a novel, part detective story, part family history, reveals some largely unknown aspects of the French Resistance. It is also a deeply human and heart wrenching memoir.

Foreword

"I have the impression to be in an American film!" she threw in a burst of laughter, opposing to the men who encircled her all the freshness of her twenty years, and her reaction disarmed for a moment this group of scoundrels gone up of the Marseilles underworld which, with the accent of the south, shouted "pôlice allemannnde!!!" to terrify their prey.

For hours, they had been waiting in the half-light of a cramped back room, between piles of colorful pottery and old carpets gathering dust. "Moroccan Art" was the proud advertisement on the front: a small store at the bottom of a building in the old town, in a sun-drenched alley where the inhabitants had drawn their wooden shutters to ease the July heat. Perhaps also to escape the palpable tension in the city, caught between the threat of Allied bombing and the increased reprisals of the occupiers. Under the sign, the iron curtain was raised, but, as if they were wary, passers-by slipped by without a glance for the few fake leather bags and hammered bracelets exposed in the window.

Silent and invisible, the group of thugs had waited undisturbed, weary but curious all the same to know who would fall into their trap. A network leader ? A young fighter who had come down from the maquis, which was giving them so much trouble? They exchanged gloomy faces, lit a cigarette... When you are a Gestapo agent, you get used to everything. To tailing, to long stakeouts, to interrogating suspects who are beaten and tortured by instinct, over and over again. The routine...

A lively, slender figure had suddenly cast a barely perceptible shadow on the powdered glass of the shop window. A quick glance inside... She had moved away... A minute later, she had retraced her steps, reached for the handle, pushed the door open. The bell had rung... They had sprung up, gun in hand, and surrounded her. But they hadn't expected this cheerful little girl, with her bright smile and big black eyes, who laughed at them as they put a gun to her stomach.

Who were they dealing with? A silly kid to whom they would quickly pass the taste for jokes? One of those "messengers" essential to the Resistance, as they had arrested several in the last few days? The kid, for her part, had not planned to react in this way, her laughter had sprung up spontaneously in front of this sinister staging. So many people for her alone? How ridiculous they looked, those little angry men gesticulating and shouting "Gestapo! “. But while trying to keep a bewildered look on her face, she thought quickly. The envelopes in her satchel... The recent information she had about the network. Who had given her the messages. The anxiety that reigned among her comrades. The location, the day before... The nervousness of the occupant... Yet she did not think she had been noticed the day before yesterday at the station. Nor in the street. No one to follow her when she had left her uncle's house... The gang of scoundrels probably didn't know everything. At least she hoped so. Instinctively, she had just chosen her strategy: play the childishness, the ignorance, the stupidity if it was necessary. Her best chance. But behind the look that she wanted to be candid and dazzled, her brain was working at a hundred hours, and fear was spreading rapidly in her veins. Her heart was beating so fast that she could hear it echoing in the room.   

This fragile and determined young girl, aware on that July 17, 1944 that she was now gambling her life, entirely alone in the face of the enemy, was the one who, many years later, would become my mother. The one who would hold my hand along the streets of my childhood. The one I would wait for, sitting among the kindergarten kids, tense with anxious impatience. When her sweet face would appear among the crowd of parents standing at the door, it would be full happiness for me. I would bring her drawings, essays, good grades, like so many offerings laid at her feet. She who was forever silent, who left far too soon, exhausted and bruised, who understood everything, who forgave everything, and who was the best mother I could have dreamed of.

The story of her dark years, when she was heroic and did not know it, I carry it with me, as far back as I can remember, but I approach it only with trembling. She had told me, in bits and pieces, a little of what she had experienced, a web of adventures, love and drama. But there were blanks, inaccuracies, things left unsaid, perhaps secrets. For a long time, I hesitated to dive in, giving up many times, coming back irresistibly, drawn back to this story as if by a magnet, a necessity. What had really happened? What had she really experienced? What had she kept quiet? So, as a detective, as a historian, I followed in her footsteps, I criss-crossed the country, searched through books and archives, police reports, court and trial records, yellowed photos, met with witnesses, historians, and specialists in order to find the traces of my mother lost in History and to meticulously reconstruct the drama of little Ginette, who was engaged in the most dangerous of battles from the age of 18.

A vital question never stopped nagging at me: Why? Why did this girl, so young, from a simple background, willingly engage in such a formidable battle? Why didn't she trust Marshal Pétain like so many Frenchmen? Why did she decide to face the monster and put her life at risk? Why did she make the right choice? Where did she get her lucidity? And how did she cope, once she fell into the hands of the head of the Gestapo? It was at this moment, this ultimate experience, that the questions I had once dared to ask her had dried up. I had not even dared to formulate them, or even think them.

This book is the story of a engagment. It is also the story of a love.  Ginette Guy and Jean Oberman, the flamboyant young Jew for whom she faced the worst dangers. At the heart of the dark years, both did not know if they would survive the turmoil, if they would survive their hazardous zigzags between the round-ups and the militia. They lived only for the present. But in the rare moments when they dared to think about the future, they imagined a life where they would no longer be afraid of anything, where for them everything would be possible again. Their future began very simply: "We will settle down together, we will take a store...". When their dreams sailed even further, they promised each other that one day they would tell their story, their joys and their fears, the fury of war and hatred, but above all their love and their frantic youth. And their immoderate passion for freedom, that supreme value that my mother instilled in me. They would write a book. They had even chosen the title: "His name was Jean Oberman".

This book that they did not write, it is up to me today to fill the pages. I hesitated for a long time to change the title, but the evidence was obvious: it is indeed little Ginette who is the heroine. The one who, naive and reckless, in the summer of 1944 - the most brutal period of Nazi repression - left, handcuffed, the little "Moroccan Art" store to be taken to the Gestapo headquarters, and who was going to have to face what frightened her the most. The one who, in the confession of one of the worst torturers of the time, is thus qualified: "She was the most resistant of all". This sentence is the whole quest of this book.