Star Crossed: A True WWII Romeo and Juliet Love Story in Hitlers Paris

How could this have happened? How could this have been allowed to have happened? What part is missing in the human soul that allowed the world to do nothing? To say nothing? I have never understood this. Maybe, after all, it's simply not understandable. Maybe it just is. Maybe it's enough that we just know it's there, lurking within us, even within the best of us. Simon Worrall and Heather Dune Macadam have spent their lives trying to unravel the mystery of how and why people turned away, of how and why some people reveled in the hatred, of how and why a special few had the courage to stand up and fight back. Many thanks to Heather and Simon for having the courage to Never Forget. Star Crossed is an important addition to their body of work. I'm not going to lie: Every sentence will break your heart. This is not an easy book to read. You'll want desperately to reach back into the pages of history and change fate. But we can't. What happened, happened. All that's left to us is to learn from it. This is not an easy book to read -- but it IS an important book. Never Forget.

Paris in the 1930s was a temple of all cultural forms: music, art, literature, film. Unfortunately, as Nazis moved into occupy France, they dimmed the City of Light. Star Crossed is the story of a Jewish family, the Zelmans, as they intersect first with Paris and then with the Nazis. Annette, the eldest daughter babysits her younger siblings and attends art school at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. She also hangs out at Café de Flore and meets such notables as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sarte, Simone Signoret, Jean Jausion, Picasso, Giacometti, and Dora Maar. As the Nazi stranglehold on Paris tightens, very existence of Annette and her family is threatened.The title of the book, Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler's Paris, seems a bit off. True, Annette is Jewish and her lover, the poet Jean Jauson, is Gentile, somewhat akin to Romeo and Juliet’s feuding families. However, the modern love story doesn’t begin until about halfway through the book, and the two lovers don’t die for each other as Romeo and Juliet did, but are individually done in the the war. The story is more a cultural history of Paris blended with a biography of Annette with a lot of cultural references, real events, photographs, drawings, and correspondence embedded. As such, the book covers a lot of ground and thus can't do justice to it all.Although the book misses somewhat on the title, it does get one thing right: the atrocities committed by the Nazis in their efforts to rid the world of populations they deemed undesirable. Such books should be written—and read—so the world cannot escape the record of past genocides and hopefully will learn to rise above such destructive malevolent behavior.

This book kept me reading; I did not want to put it down. I felt as though I got to know the people in it. It was very sad; yet necessary story to be told.

The "star-crossed" lovers in this novel are a Jewish girl and Catholic boy who fall in love during the German occupation of Paris during WWII. This non-fiction account of their relationship is drawn from letters and interviews that give insight into the culture, arts, and social challenges of this time in history.Annette is a young Jewish girl who is a student at the Beaux-Arts, a free spirit who becomes involved with the artist community of the Latin Quarter of Paris, which includes a number of well-known artists and authors. She falls in love with Jean Jausion, a handsome Catholic poet who frequents the same club and shares her circle of friends. Their relationship is challenged by their families' opposition because of their religious differences as well as the persecution of the Jews during this time. As the Nazis escalate their efforts to arrest and deport the Jews of Paris, Annette is eventually arrested and sent to the concentration camps, with Jean left behind to fear her fate and vow to search for her.I found the first half of the book to be rather slow and difficult to get into. It seemed that the detail about Annette's involvement with the artistic community was more lengthy than necessary and I did not find it terribly interesting. The second half of the book was better, once it focused on her relationship with Jean and the threat imposed by the Nazis. Although the fact that the details of the story were based on actual documents and interviews made it somewhat compelling, I must say that I have read so many stories about the holocaust that I did not find it to contain any new information or insights.I do want to acknowledge that I won this book in a contest sponsored by Kensington Books.

This was an intense historical book based on the life of a Czech Jewish girl and her family living in France during World War II based on memories of her younger sister. I'll admit that I really had my doubts about this book for the first couple of chapters. There were lots of names of people and places--way more than I could have kept track of even if they weren't French.However, once the story of Annete Zelman and her family became the main focus of the book, I was all in. There were times when it was a little too intense for me and I would put it down, but for the most part I just kept reading to see what was going to happen next. I read with hope, disbelief, despair (no Annete, no!) and grief. A truly touching book about a past that should never be forgotten.Thanks to Kensington Books and NetGalley for the gifted hardback. All thoughts are my own.

I think this book would have kept my interest if it had been a straight biographical book with no added fictional reconstructions.