Monsieur Le Commandant
Ratings1
Average rating3
15
Ratings1
Average rating3
"Probably one of the most significant novels of this year."--L'Express "As soon as you open Monsieur Le Commandant you will not be able to put it down, such is Slocombe's affinity for his subject matter. . . . His virtuosity and manner of storytelling reveal true talent. . . . Go out and buy a copy of Monsieur Le Commandant as soon as you can. Read it; you'll be glad you did."--Le Point "The novel is, in a unique way, a powerful piece of Resistance literature."--La Vie French Academician and Nazi sympathizer Paul-Jean Husson writes a letter to his local SS officer in the autumn of 1942. Tormented by an illicit passion for Ilse, his German daughter-in-law, Husson has made a decision that will devastate several lives, including his own. The letter is intended to explain his actions. It is a dramatic, sometimes harrowing story that begins in the years leading up to the war, when following the accidental drowning of his daughter, Husson's previously gilded life begins to unravel. And through Husson's confession, Romain Slocombe gives the reader a startling picture of a man's journey: from pillar of the French Establishment and World War One hero to outspoken supporter of Nazi ideology and the Vichy government. Romain Slocombe is a writer, director, translator, illustrator, cartoonist, and photographer. He was born in Paris in 1953.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book is about a French soldier that is writing a letter to a local SS officer.
The letter is split up into chapters to make it easier to read.
I don't particularly like the person Paul-Jean Husson who is writing to the SS officer, he is a fascist, and a pervert, his son Olivier is married to a German-Jewish woman named Ilse but he doesn't find out till later that she is Jewish.
He hates the Jewish people, and believes that they are turning France in 1940-1945 into a “cesspool” due to foreign people in his country his “motherland” and something must be done about the “Jewish problem or the Jewish question” as it was referred to in the book.
I do not share this opinion and I haven't read much about this era in time yet, but I don't understand why they condemned the Jewish people just due to their race and nationality or because they didn't like the way they worshiped god, because they are christian.
Paul-Jean is lusting after and in love with his son's wife, who is only 19 and he is old enough to be her father which is disgusting, but eventually he manipulates the situation so they are intimate and she becomes pregnant with his child and was considering getting rid of it because it is suspicious why she is pregnant again after, having two of Olivier's children Hermione and Aristide so she thought it was a “silly or stupid mistake” and wouldn't speak to him afterwards because she was ashamed and didn't want Olivier to find out.
Since she was a German she married Olivier and he insisted on her becoming a French citizen so no one would suspect anything and Paul-Jean asked people that he knew to hide her documents so they wouldn't look any further in her background and find out that her religion was Jewish.
However even though the “naturalization process” whatever that is I don't really understand what it is and what the Germans did to “naturalize the Jews”
She was still questioned by the authorities and sent to a concentration camp where she died.
I think due to her thinking that it was a mistake that Paul-Jean Husson told the authorities that she was a Jew and that's why she was sent to Auschwitz and died, because that is exactly what happened to her, while still pregnant she was murdered by the Nazis!
He said “he still loved her and he also said that he hated the Jews” Ilse was Jewish so she was already doomed to die sadly.
