Notes on book "Suite Francais" by author Irene Nemirovsky

With the recent religious intolerance and terrorism in France, I recommend the book "Suite Francaise" (publ. 2007, Alfred A Knopf, NY) by Irene Nemirovsky who was born in Russia to a wealthy Jewish family who escaped from the Bolsheviks in 1919 to France.

She and her husband and two daughters were living in Paris when the the Germans occupied France in 1940.

She was sent to Auschwitz in 1942, where she died, before she finished the novel. Her husband, Michel Epstein was also sent to the gas chamber in Auschwitz.

Their daughters Denise and Elizabeth were able to survive the war, hidden by friends. Denise Epstein hid the manuscript for "Suite Francaise" in a suitcase and years later transcribed her mother's very small handwritten notes to become the book which her sister Elizabeth Gille helped publish in France in 2004. It was translated into English by Sandra Smith in 2006.

This is an excellent book, the first fiction about World War II with a different view of the war, written by someone who experienced it in the early days.

We must remember what intolerance brought us in World War II, and hopefully this film will help to remind us how horrible it was and that it must not happen again.

I just hope the film does not "Hollywoodize" the story.