Download or read book The Spiral Shell written by Sandell Morse and published by Schaffner Press. This book was released on 2022-04-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this haunting memoir, author Sandell Morse discovers stories of bravery and resistance during WWII in a small town in southern France, and in turn finds deeper meaning and understanding of her own Jewish heritage, denied to her in her childhood. In the course of a three-year writing residency in the village of Auvillar, she painstakingly pieces together the puzzle that had been beguiling her: where were the Jews of the town, who had mysteriously vanished from its history? By gradually gaining the trust of some the village's elders, Sandell reconstructs the accounts of the civilians' extraordinary courage in resisting the Vichy and Nazi occupation. In these harrowing tales of escape, ingenious subterfuge, and just plain luck, she learns of the nunnery that was a safe-house for refugee girls; a rabbi and leader of the boy-scouts who gave his life to save hundreds of children; the local gendarme who, endangering his own life, tipped the Resistance off to the upcoming Nazi roundups. This memoir will be certain to appeal to all readers of WWII history intrigued and inspired by the true stories of these women and men who, though barely remembered, courageously and quietly did their part to save lives, often at the expense of their own.