Early in the book, Joseph is told to deny his Jewish identity, and he asks, “What is…a Jew?” His father says, “Well, it’s kind of embarrassing, but…I don’t really know.” At the time, Joffo probably didn’t think he was living an adventure story. In real life, Joseph Joffo’s father died in a concentration camp, and the last image in the story highlights his framed, sepia-toned photo. (Bailly’s pictures of the free zone in Marseille are gorgeous.) But the memoir is always a moment away from tragedy. For a brief portion of the war, he spends his days eating pastries and watching the same movie over and over again. Ten-year-old Joseph even looks a bit like Tintin, with his skinny frame and blond hair. No one would describe this book as a thriller, but it has false identities and escapes through the forest in the dark of night. One almost never hears the sentence, “I’m reading a Holocaust book for fun,” but parts of this memoir of French Jews fleeing the Occupation read like an adventure story.
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