French Resistance

  • What a sense of relief it must have been when the French people found out that the allied troops had finally arrived on June 6 1944. Unfortunately though D-Day wasn’t the end of the war it was only the start of the end and many innocent lives were still lost between that day and the

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  • Many people have this misconception about the resistance of the Jews against the Nazi regime, many think they just gave up without a fight. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. There were many Jewish partisan groups and resistance fighters across Europe. In this blog I will put the focus on the French Armée Juive,

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  • Chanson d’Automne (Autumn Song) is a poem by Paul Verlaine, one of the best-known in the French language. It is included in Verlaine’s first collection, Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866 (see 1866 in poetry). The poem forms part of the paysages tristes (sad landscapes) section of the collection. In World War II lines from the

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  • What’s in a name? Usually not much really but sometimes it can be everything. It can even be the difference of life and death. In this case the name Jean Stephan, both men were members of the French resistance but their lives had completely different outcomes. Jean Stéphan was  a French resistant born October 28,

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  •   Sr Maria Restituta Kafka: Born on 1 May 1894 [at Hussowitz bei Bruenn in the Austria-Hungary Empire, today] Brno-Husovice, in modern day Czech Republic, of humble background, Helene Kafka grew up in the Austrian capital where she worked in the Lainz hospital with the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity. In 1914 she entered the convent

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