I’m tremendously pleased to let you know about the recent publication of The Weidners in Wartime: Letters of Daily Survival and Heroism under Nazi Rule by Janet Holmes Carper. Janet and I have become friends through our overlapping research and she has been more than generous with her help. In fact, it’s possible that it was the excellence of her French translations of my letters that got me into an archive or two.

Janet Carper has spent years compiling, translating and contextualizing the wartime letters correspondence of the Weidner Family. As the leader of Dutch-Paris, Jean Weidner was based in Lyon during the war although he travelled frequently and shifted his base to Switzerland. His sister Gabrielle lived in Paris, where she was also involved in Dutch-Paris. Their parents and younger sister Annette lived in The Hague. Just staying in touch across so many different occupation zones posed serious challenges. The family had to develop their own code because the regular mail was curtailed and censored. Even when they found messengers to deliver their mail personally, they felt a pressing need to be discreet.

The family needed discretion because of Jean and Gabrielle’s involvement in rescuing fugitives, of course, but also because “Papa” Weidner was up to something shady as well. It was probably the garden variety shadiness of Dutch civilians under Occupation, but it still landed him in jail. So much of the letters deal with the ever day difficulties and inconveniences of living under occupation. But the Weidners were Seventh-day Adventists, meaning they were vegetarians. Their dietary restrictions complicated the already intricate negotiations for food that everyone went through. So the family discusses not only how to find enough nutrients but also the moral arguments for and against eating meat under the circumstances.

Carper has done a superb job of teasing out the hidden meanings between the lines to show us what living under Nazi occupation was really like day in and day out. Anyone who’s wanted more psychological depth to the story of Dutch-Paris will find it here in the correspondence of siblings and parents separated by war at a time when they needed each other’s support the most.

ISBN: 978-1-7346999-0-6