VICTORIA University French lecturer Keren Chiaroni discovered the best and worst of human nature when researching her book The Last of the Human Freedoms.
Based on letters, journals, military records and personal accounts her book tells of three kiwi airmen downed over France during the Second World War and the French citizens who risked and sometimes gave their lives to help in their escape.
It was a chance meeting with the daughter of a Frenchman who gave his life for sheltering a Kiwi airman that inspired Chiaroni’s book. Nadia Malarmey was in New Zealand visiting the descendants of John Sanderson, a Kiwi airman shot down over Laines-aux-Bois in 1944. It had been Malarmey’s parents who had sheltered Sanderson but when a local doctor was called in to treat the airman’s wounds the family was betrayed to the Gestapo. While Malarmey’s mother was eventually released her father died en route to Dachau concentration camp. Sanderson was made a prisoner but survived the war to return to his family in New Zealand. Ever grateful he began a correspondence with the French family that had sheltered him.
“I was astonished the continuing legacy of something so terrible had united these two families through the generations to this day,” Chiaroni says. “I knew there were a lot of similar stories that had never been told.”
The price was also high for those who helped another airman Chiaroni depicts. Raymond Glensor, of Wellington, was shot down over St Omer in 1942. Glensor was hidden by the local population before making his way over the Pyrenees and back to England. However, the men who played the most crucial role in Glensor’s escape were later arrested and sent to concentration camps. One died in the camps while the others returned with nightmares that remained with them the rest of their lives.
“I’m constantly amazed that under quite terrible conditions so many French civilians showed extraordinary bravery,” Chiaroni says. “Some were members of the Resistance and others just ordinary citizens from all different walks of life.”
She says another revelation for her was how young people featured in many of the escape stories.
“It was young people who held the first demonstration against the Nazi occupiers on November 11 1940, and many were arrested and a few disappeared. Children and young people also played active and often dangerous roles in the underground resistance. It’s a wonderful impressive fact of history.”
Chiaroni says she hopes her book will remind readers of the role of choice in their lives, especially in circumstances where freedoms have been curtailed.
“In Second World War France some chose to be cruel and willing collaborators while others were just fiercely brave. It’s a reminder that political regimes, threats to freedom, or poverty, do not define somebody’s humanity. It’s a reminder that we too have choices, a lot less dramatic, but choices that have great impact on others. It’s a reminder that our freedom to make choices is always ours,” Chiaroni says.
The Last of the Human Freedoms by Keren Chiaroni, published by Harper Collins.