British journalist Tim Judah's grandmother Edith Müller perished in the Holocaust, and Edith's daughters (Tim's mother Marion and aunt Huguette) survived by dint of grit, luck, and the kindness of a stranger. In this book Rosie Whitehouse (Tim's wife) tells the well-researched story of Tim's Jewish forebears, who fled from Germany to France before WWII. Jews hoped to be safe in France, but many were victims of the Vichy government's cooperation with the Nazis and/or French citizens who either collaborated or looked the other way.

Even in the midst of this deplorable situation, however, there were French heroes who helped Jews. Righteous Among Nations is an honor given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Author Rosie Whitehouse writes, "Almost 28,000 people across the world have been given the honor, 4,000 of them in France."

One recipient of Righteous Among Nations is Dr. Frédéric Pétri, whose name will be engraved on Jerusalem's Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous. Dr. Pétri saved the life of Tim's aunt Huguette, and this kindness is what inspired Whitehouse to research and write this book. Dr. Pétri's brave deed happened like this: In the fall of 1943, during the German occupation of France, Edith Müller was sent to a concentration camp. Her daughters, 15-year-old Huguette and 20-year-old Marion fled from Lyon to hide out in the mountain town of Val d’Isère. Huguette slipped and broke her leg, and Dr. Pétri was called to help.

Dr. Pétri said Huguette needed to be moved to the hospital, but Marion knew the Germans patrolled the hospital, and she punched Dr. Pétri in the face. Dr. Pétri realized the girls were Jewish and immediately said he would look after Huguette himself in his own house. Dr. Pétri warned Marion to leave the village immediately and come back in six months, by which time Huguette's leg would be healed. After six months Marion and Huguette were re-united, and though they faced more danger, both girls survived WWII.

This is the bare bones of the story, which Whitehouse begins back when the Müllers' forebears lived in Berlin. To research the book, Whitehouse (who lives in Britain) traveled to Germany and France; went to addresses and sites related to the family; visited museums and archives; found photos and papers among Marion and Huguettes belongings; did research on the internet; interviewed people; and more.

Whitehouse's narrative is very detailed, and includes the history and politics of western Europe; stories about roundups of Jews; descriptions of resistance groups; anecdotes about radio broadcasts; portrayals of Nazis and other relevant people; and much more. Whitehouse also imaginatively re-creates events, and describes them as they might have happened. For this review, though, I'll just provide a glimpse of the Müllers' personal tale.

Before WWII, the Müllers - Edith, her husband Johannes, and their daughters Marion and Huguette - lived in Berlin, where Edith's family owned a large textile factory. After Hitler came to power in 1933, stormtroopers beat up Jews and denounced them, and the Müllers moved to France Once WWII broke out, France was no haven. Xenophobic language filled newspapers, and right-wing leaders inflamed the population's anti-Semitism. Marion and Huguette were told not to tell anyone they were Jewish. The family pretended to be Catholic, and became "as French as they possibly could in their tastes, in the clothes they wore, and even the food they ate."

In 1940, Germany forced the capitulation of France, and a new anti-democratic, anti-Semitic government was formed in the town of Vichy. German troops poured into France, hunted down Jews, and sent them to concentration camps. The Müllers had forged identification papers, but these were no guarantees of safety.

To exacerbate the situation, Johannes Müller was an unfaithful husband and neglectful father who abandoned the family to be with his mistress Lucette. This left the female Müllers on their own, which amplified their problems.

In September 1943 Marion was in Lyon, and Edith and Huguette were in Nice. An informer reported Edith, who was arrested while Huguette was in school.

In Whitehouse's imagination, this was Edith's fate: Edith was taken to the Hôtel Excelsior, which was crowded with apprehended people waiting under a huge Swastika flag. Edith was then interrogated by frightening and shouting SS officers, who wanted the names of family and friends. Edith was made to give up her valuables and - on transport day - she and other prisoners were marched to the train station, crowded into a carriage, and taken to the transit camp at Drancy. The trip took 48 hours, and the prisoners had no room to sit, no food, and no water. From Drancy, Edith was sent to Auschwitz and gassed.

When Huguette returned from school to find an empty house, she was told her mother had been arrested. Huguette then made her way to Marion in a roundabout way, and the girls went to Val d’Isère and were assisted by Dr. Pétri, as described above.

Marion and Huguette survived the war, as did their father Johannes, and Whitehouse writes about their lives after the conflict.

France's role in exterminating Jews is probably less well known than Germany's, and Whitehouse's explication is edifying and horrifying. I'll give a few examples.

► In 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain became head of the collaborationist regime in Vichy. Under his leadership, a commission revoked the citizenship of over a million naturalized French citizens, many of whom were Jews. This led to innumerable arrests and murders.

► In 1942, SS Officer Theodor Dannecker ordered a roundup of all Jews in France, René Bousquet - Vichy's French head of police - agreed that his men would round up 22,000 foreign Jews whose names the police held in a register.

► In summer 1942, there was a wave of denunciations as French people wrote to local officials and even to Marshal Pétain, denouncing Jews. One person wrote to say 'we want a French Cannes and not an international town where the Jews are the masters in control...Jews should be forced to wear a yellow hat, condemned to forced labor and their money confiscated. Ideally they should be made to disappear in bottomless boats to feed the fish they deprive us of.'

► In 1943, a violent roundup took place in Marseille. The city was full of Jewish refugees, and on René Bousquet's orders, 12,000 French police were brought into the city to help the Germans carry out a major operation against the Jews.

► In 1945, shortly before VE Day, disputes over housing shortages in Paris prompted 500 demonstrators to march through the city shouting 'Death to the Jews' and 'France for the French.'

After the war, the Jewish experience in France was pushed aside as people attempted to whitewash the horror. Whitehouse notes, 'Thousands of Jewish businesses had been sold to non-Jews during the war, who were now reluctant to return them. There was little sympathy for Jewish survivors. French stateswoman Simone Veil was called 'Dirty Jew' by a doctor in a medical examination after she returned home from Auschwitz.' And on and on.

To be fair, in 1995, President Jacque Chirac, referring to the persecution of Jews, admitted: "These dark hours forever sully our history and are an insult to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state." Chirac also recognized the Righteous Among Nations as new national heroes. Then in 2000, July 16 became a day "of commemoration of racist and anti-Semitic crimes committed by the French State and of tribute to the Righteous of France."

Whitehouse and her relatives met some of Dr. Frédéric Pétri's descendants, and attended the ceremony when Dr. Pétri was posthumously awarded the Righteous Among Nations. This is an uplifting finale to an often dark story.

Two Sisters would appeal to readers interested in history, WWII, and the Holocaust.

Thanks to Netgalley, Rosie Whitehouse, and Union Square & Co. for a copy of the book.

Thank you Netgalley for the free ARC I return for an honest review.

There are many things I appreciated about this book. 1. Whitehouse didn’t have a whole lot of information to go off if. Yet, her determination to find out more about the many who saved her Jewish grandmother’s life as a teen, to get him formal recognition, and just tell grandmother’s story was admirable. 2. I enjoyed both hearing the story of the two sisters, and also the research process Whitehouse used to find out the facts and the context and what is happening currently in some locations in the story, such as the hotel Jews were held in until they were taken to Auschwitz. 3. I was truly invested in learning with Whitehouse her family’s story and I learned things about history I hadn’t before. I didn’t know that Jews had their citizenship taken away in both Germany and France. That was eerie and hit home to me.

Wow - what a truly powerful book. I appreciated learning more about the sisters and their stories. As someone who has visited many Holocaust-related sites in France, I cannot stress enough how important it is that this story is out there for people to read - the impact of the Holocaust on France isn't discussed enough, so this is an extremely valuable book. Highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley and Union Square & Co for an advance copy of this book.

When young Huguette arrived in the small ski resort of Val d’Isere after escaping dangerous Lyon with her sister Marion, she slipped and broke her leg. When a young doctor saw the break, he wanted her to go to hospital and Marion, heavily involved in the Resistance and terrified of the Gestapo searching for Jews even in the hospitals, punched him! He then offered to take care of her at his place at great risk to himself.

When the author found out about her brave mother-in-law and the courageous doctor, she decided to try and have him registered as Righteous Among Nations, a difficult process. This led to this amazing book, a true story of courage and resistance under incredible conditions. It is also an extremely dark and harrowing story about France under the Occupation, and the Holocaust.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This was a very interesting book. Because I talked about how families or Jewish left Germany at everything behind and went to France this. Do not turn out too well for This family. The father had different women and the mother had to put up with it.The two sisters were totally different. The older sister was very outgoing but the younger sister had to stay behind with the mother. Interesting to see how the relationship of this family changed over time. The mother was very forward thinking and she knew things were going to change drastically not for the good. When paris was taken over by the germans they had to go to southern france. The oldest Sister.
Want to live in l y o n. The mother.
And the younger once behind. They tried to keep the Jewish identity hidden because they had spies. They were running up the Jewish people.. The older sister was working with the French Renaissance.And was trying to help the jews leave france. When the mother was taken away.
Her father was nowhere to be F o u n d. She finally Realize he was in Paris, so she made her way up to him.But he did not want her to stay with him.And so you're gonna send her down to live with the Older sister. Things were very hard for them and when she broke her leg at evening more complicated. So a very kind doctor up in the swiss alps kept her hidden 46 months to help with her leg. Book begins about how they were trying to trace their family in history because they did not talk about it. It was interesting having these 2 parallel stories going on at the same time.

Very interesting and very well researched! A bit of a dry read at times though and feels very long. Amazing detail of all the people involved.

Two Sisters is a harrowing, gut wrenching and poignant true story about the journalist author's Jewish mother-in-law Marion and her two daughters, Edith and Haguette during World War II mainly in the area of Vichy, France. Little did she know these women were heroines!
Meticulously and personally researched, the impact of what the family went through hit my heart. Comfortably off, the girls wanted for nothing growing up. Their father forced them to become as French as they could, from wearing certain clothes to eating a certain way. Little did they know this would serve them well in their futures when Nazis occupied Germany. After their mother was taken to Auschwitz, the two young ladies fled to a French ski resort where Haguette broke her leg. The kindness of Dr. Frédéric Pétri saved their lives...and others. Until her last days, Haguette wondered why a non-Jew would risk his life to save theirs. The author wanted to put her mind to ease in her old age and recognize the doctor's family so did what was necessary through a complex process to get the doctor recognized as Righteous Among Nations, an honour given only to non-Jews who saved Jews. What a beautiful thing to do for his proud family!

Not only does the author describe the necessary subterfuge of Resistance, forgeries and the black market but also French collaborators and betrayal. She described the sisters' roles and Edith's fate. Formal and informal personal family photographs bring the story to life as do lists of those who were rounded up and murdered from the area. Drancy is a seldom-written about camp, one I read so little about. We are reminded that police had the choice whether or not to take the high road, though difficult. Realities after the end of the war set in and were grim as well. But amidst the cruelty and devastation were snippets of hope.

What a fascinating book! I have read countless books on the Holocaust and am always amazed by the resilience, perseverance and determination. Not only that but each story is different in its unique perspectives, locations and backgrounds. Well worth reading.

My sincere thank you to Union Square & Co. and NetGalley for providing me with an early digital copy of this powerful book.

Very interesting to learn more about the Resistance in France. Also an important read.
Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

this was really nicely done. it reminded me of the postcard & east-west street, which are two of my favourite books; however, while i do commend the author for her fieldwork, i do think the writing could do with some editing, as it lagged a bit at times and it detracted some of the impact from the overall experience. i do think it was a very nice read, though, and i believe any ww2 enjoyer would like it.

This was so well-researched and well-written. I couldn't put it down, and was fascinated to learn about the Jewish resistance network in France. The author's MIL was a hero who never claimed a title for herself, but saved as many lives as she could including her own family. The journey began with the MIL's death and the request of Aunt Huguette to find a man who saved her during the Holocaust. She wanted to know why he saved her, and to confer the title Righteous Among Nations on him for his actions. The book also explores other acts of French complicity as well as French resistance, including a whole town that saved thousands of Jewish people, earning the town the title of Righteous Among Nations. I was saddened to learn that there is no title for Jewish people who acted in the resistance, as Marian, the MIL, would surely be considered Righteous as well.

I highly recommend this book for a little-known history of France's involvement in the Holocaust as well as in the resistance.