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And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II
When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.
* Chosen as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century by a jury of writers including Harold Kushner, Thomas Moore, Huston Smith, and Natalie Goldberg
* This fourth edition includes a new insert of photographs
“One of the most powerful memoirs I’ve ever encountered...[Lusseyran’s] experience is thrilling, horrible, honest, spiritually profound, and utterly full of joy.”
— Ethan Hawke, in the Village Voice
* Chosen as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century by a jury of writers including Harold Kushner, Thomas Moore, Huston Smith, and Natalie Goldberg
* This fourth edition includes a new insert of photographs
“One of the most powerful memoirs I’ve ever encountered...[Lusseyran’s] experience is thrilling, horrible, honest, spiritually profound, and utterly full of joy.”
— Ethan Hawke, in the Village Voice
304 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1963
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 578 reviews
October 8, 2017
This book is one of the most touching and heart wrenching I have ever read. It is also one of the most inspiring and uplifting books I have ever read. I realize how ambiguous those sentences are next to each other, yet they also fully describe the life of Jacques Lusseyran. His life and how he lived it is nothing if not an enigma – a beautiful mystery that he says comes down to two truths. One is that joy isn’t outside ourselves, but is to be found within; and the other, that the light that is the essence of life is also within so it doesn’t need eyes to see it.
At the age of 8, Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight due to an accident in school. He states that after it happened, he realized that everything has light within it, that everything is flooded with different colors, and that sounds, touch, colors, and light are all interchangeable and can fill in for each other at will. The many experiences he describes as a young boy growing into adolescence without sight, but with all his other senses on hyper alert was a revelation to him. He also described the colors he could see as different musical instruments were played in a concert.
Professor Lusseyran was born at a time when his life’s course would inevitably collide with World War II. He lived in Paris when he was in his teens during the Nazi occupation, and at the age of 17 he became the primary leader of a Resistance movement of 600 young men and teenagers. They joined forces with a larger movement and together expanded their forces. In July 1943, they were betrayed by an informer within the group and arrested. After months in prison in Paris, they were deported to Bunchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
This is the framework upon which Jacques Lusseyran’s story is built. There is so much beauty in his story, so many amazing adventures juxtaposed with later deprivation and hardship. Yet through it all, over and over again, his childhood of wondrous discovery coupled with his outstanding intelligence and solid common sense pulled him through with grace and humanity intact. Not only did his inner strength and boundless joy pull him through, it helped him to help others find their way through as well.
Thank you to Goodreads friends Betsy and Ingrid whose reviews were ones that inspired me to read this book. I hope that in some small way this review will join with theirs and encourage you to read this book, too. “And There Was Light” holds all the colours of hope, the sounds of joy, and positively crackles with the light of life.
At the age of 8, Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight due to an accident in school. He states that after it happened, he realized that everything has light within it, that everything is flooded with different colors, and that sounds, touch, colors, and light are all interchangeable and can fill in for each other at will. The many experiences he describes as a young boy growing into adolescence without sight, but with all his other senses on hyper alert was a revelation to him. He also described the colors he could see as different musical instruments were played in a concert.
Professor Lusseyran was born at a time when his life’s course would inevitably collide with World War II. He lived in Paris when he was in his teens during the Nazi occupation, and at the age of 17 he became the primary leader of a Resistance movement of 600 young men and teenagers. They joined forces with a larger movement and together expanded their forces. In July 1943, they were betrayed by an informer within the group and arrested. After months in prison in Paris, they were deported to Bunchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
This is the framework upon which Jacques Lusseyran’s story is built. There is so much beauty in his story, so many amazing adventures juxtaposed with later deprivation and hardship. Yet through it all, over and over again, his childhood of wondrous discovery coupled with his outstanding intelligence and solid common sense pulled him through with grace and humanity intact. Not only did his inner strength and boundless joy pull him through, it helped him to help others find their way through as well.
Thank you to Goodreads friends Betsy and Ingrid whose reviews were ones that inspired me to read this book. I hope that in some small way this review will join with theirs and encourage you to read this book, too. “And There Was Light” holds all the colours of hope, the sounds of joy, and positively crackles with the light of life.
October 17, 2017
Amazing book by an amazing man. Jacques Lusseyran went blind as a young boy after a seemingly innocuous accident at school. I’ve never before read the memoir of a blind person and his account of how he adapted to his new world and what it entailed was a deeply fascinating education. Even had the Nazis not arrived in Paris where he lived this would have been a compelling memoir. But the fact he then forms one of the first resistance movements cranks up the tension tenfold. The mind boggles at what he achieves. One of the most moving features of this book is his depiction of his boyhood friends - Jean, Georges and Francois. All three follow him into the resistance. We of course know he survives the war but we don’t know if his friends do and he makes us so fond of them that we’re praying they too make it. This looks unlikely when the entire organisation is arrested and eventually transported to Buchenwald concentration camp. There was a traitor in their midst.
It’s not unlikely Anthony Doerr got his idea for All the Light We Cannot See from this book. In fact it’s the first book he mentions on his acknowledgements page.
Recommended to all and sundry and massive thanks to Jaline and her fabulous review for drawing my attention to it.
It’s not unlikely Anthony Doerr got his idea for All the Light We Cannot See from this book. In fact it’s the first book he mentions on his acknowledgements page.
Recommended to all and sundry and massive thanks to Jaline and her fabulous review for drawing my attention to it.
December 16, 2008
An astonishing book. I was so moved by this man's life that I researched until I found someone who knew him to ask what it was like to be around him. I was told that when one met Jacques Lusseyran they felt they were being fully seen...for the first time...maybe the only time in their life.
June 9, 2025
Anyone considering this memoir should be aware that it tells about the childhood and youth of an intellectual. The author has strong interests in religion and spiritual ideas and they are woven deeply into this book.
He became blind as a child because of an accident. He describes his youth and his studies. He was active in the resistance and describes his experience in detail. The last section of the book is his time at Buchenwald.
By the end I was glad to have read it. I was constantly reminded that the author lived in a different era. He survived using his unique tools along with luck or providence.
He became blind as a child because of an accident. He describes his youth and his studies. He was active in the resistance and describes his experience in detail. The last section of the book is his time at Buchenwald.
By the end I was glad to have read it. I was constantly reminded that the author lived in a different era. He survived using his unique tools along with luck or providence.
December 29, 2021
It's books like this that make me think living in the covid world isn't so bad afterall.
Imagine being blind and stuck in the Buchenwald barracks for the Invalids where you are basically condemned to a living hell on earth. One of the most harrowing holocaust testimonies I'll likely ever read. And yet, the book on the whole, as well as being deeply moving, was just so inspirational, and as much as about blindness, music, faith and love, as it was about the horrors of WW2. It's tragic to think Lusseyran survived, only to die in a car accident aged 46.
Imagine being blind and stuck in the Buchenwald barracks for the Invalids where you are basically condemned to a living hell on earth. One of the most harrowing holocaust testimonies I'll likely ever read. And yet, the book on the whole, as well as being deeply moving, was just so inspirational, and as much as about blindness, music, faith and love, as it was about the horrors of WW2. It's tragic to think Lusseyran survived, only to die in a car accident aged 46.
September 23, 2017
One of the best books I've ever read.
9/22/17 Update, many years after reading this book.
It suddenly seems to me time to remind people about this extraordinary autobiography of an extraordinary man, Jacques Lusseyran, who became a hero of the French Resistance during WWII. He was completely blind from a childhood accident, yet he could see. You will have to read the book to get more of an explanation for that. And by the way, I literally mean "see"--form and light.
I first met Lusseyran long after his death in 1971, when I went to work for Parabola magazine which was then publishing a book I ended up editing: a collection of mind-blowing essays by Lusseyran, Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writings. (Both that and this autobiography have since been acquired and republished by another company.) Although I fell as madly in love with a man as is possible through his writing alone, until about ten years ago, I had only listened to the abridged version of And There Was Light--an extraordinary reading by Andre Gregory on tape, now out of print. So it was years after the job at Parabola that I finally dove into the complete edition in paperback, and my god!
If you feel starved for truth, grace, humility, and true nobility, meet Mr. Lusseyran. Please! He is there to help.
[By the way, Anthony Doerr borrowed from this book, fully credited in his acknowledgements, for his Pulitzer-winner All The Light We Cannot See. I loved that book, but Lusseyran still wins my admiration hands down in a contest between the two.]
9/22/17 Update, many years after reading this book.
It suddenly seems to me time to remind people about this extraordinary autobiography of an extraordinary man, Jacques Lusseyran, who became a hero of the French Resistance during WWII. He was completely blind from a childhood accident, yet he could see. You will have to read the book to get more of an explanation for that. And by the way, I literally mean "see"--form and light.
I first met Lusseyran long after his death in 1971, when I went to work for Parabola magazine which was then publishing a book I ended up editing: a collection of mind-blowing essays by Lusseyran, Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writings. (Both that and this autobiography have since been acquired and republished by another company.) Although I fell as madly in love with a man as is possible through his writing alone, until about ten years ago, I had only listened to the abridged version of And There Was Light--an extraordinary reading by Andre Gregory on tape, now out of print. So it was years after the job at Parabola that I finally dove into the complete edition in paperback, and my god!
If you feel starved for truth, grace, humility, and true nobility, meet Mr. Lusseyran. Please! He is there to help.
[By the way, Anthony Doerr borrowed from this book, fully credited in his acknowledgements, for his Pulitzer-winner All The Light We Cannot See. I loved that book, but Lusseyran still wins my admiration hands down in a contest between the two.]
August 13, 2023
Jacques Lusseyran lost sight in an accident at the age of eight. Due to his parents efforts, he continued, as much as possible, to live normal life (regular school, playgrounds etc.) and for the most part avoided being bitter about his fate and feeling sorry for himself.
Another major factor in his happy disposition was his devout Catolicism verging on mysticism. He had no doubt that the internal light burning inside him came straight from Jesus Christ and that it's the hand of god that led him through the horrors of Buchenwald.
Not my cup of tea to look for solace in godly benevolence, but I can understand how he found strength in this belief.
On his blindness and his light:
Immediately, the substance of the universe drew together, redefined and peopled itself anew. I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I knew nothing about, a place which might as well have been outside me as within. But radiance was there, or, to put it more precisely, light. It was a fact, for light was there. I felt indescribable relief, and happiness so great it almost made me laugh. Confidence and gratitude came as if a prayer had been answered. I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together. I saw light and went on seeing it though I was blind.
You always think of sounds beginning and ending abruptly. But now I realized that nothing could be more false. Now my ears heard the sounds almost before they were there, touching me with the tips of their fingers and directing me toward them. Often I seemed to hear people speak before they began talking. Sounds had the same individuality as light. They were neither inside nor outside, they were passing through me. They gave me my bearings in space and put me in touch with things. It was not like signals that they functioned, but like replies.
As soon as my hands came to life they put me in a world where everything was an exchange of pressures. These pressures gathered together in shapes, and each one of the shapes had meaning. As a child I spent hours leaning against objects and letting them lean against me. Any blind person can tell you that this gesture, this exchange, gives him a satisfaction too deep for words.
With smell it was the same as it was with touch— like touch an obvious part of the loving substance of the universe. I began to guess what animals must feel when they sniff the air. Like sound and shape, smell was more distinctive than I used to think it was. There were physical smells and moral ones.
Blindness is an obstacle, but only becomes a misery if folly is added. I tell them to be reassured and never to set themselves against what their small boy or girl is finding out. They should never say: “You can’t know that because you can’t see”; and as infrequently as possible, “Don’t do that, it is dangerous.” For a blind child there is a threat greater than all the wounds and bumps, the scratches and most of the blows, and that is the danger of isolation.
All of us, whether we are blind or not, are terribly greedy. We want things only for ourselves. Even without realizing it, we want the universe to be like us and give us all the room in it. But a blind child learns very quickly that this cannot be. He has to learn it, for every time he forgets that he is not alone in the world he strikes against an object, hurts himself and is called to order. But each time he remembers he is rewarded, for everything comes his way.
On music:
For a blind person music is nourishment, as beauty is for those who see. He needs to receive it, to have it administered at intervals like food. Otherwise a void is created inside him and causes him pain.
I was not a musician, not really. I learned to play the cello. For eight years I practiced scales and did exercises. I played some simple pieces respectably. Once I belonged to a trio and managed not to destroy it altogether. But music was not my language. I excelled in listening to it, but I would never be able to speak it. Music was made for blind people, but some blind people are not made for music. I was among them; I was one of the visual blind.
He used to think women existed solely for decorative and housekeeping purposes:
[...]Aliette failed her exams three weeks later, and that Jean and I passed. For us it was a personal defeat. Fortunately, Aliette, drying a few tears as she read the list that was posted, looked prettier than ever. And she knew very well that we were men, and that men were supposed to be first in this kind of competition. That was only natural.
On philosophers:
As a rule they had chosen a direction which the best of them had been able to follow through an entire volume, in some cases for a lifetime. This was true of Plato and Spinoza. But the choice in itself and their obstinacy in pursuing it were limiting, and prevented them from looking about them. I saw their thinking as to the surface of a sphere, but only at one point, thus losing touch with the reality of the universe which could be nothing less than the sphere as a whole. In this way, the more deductive and systematic a philosopher was, the greater his defeats as I saw them. Poets and most artists said and did many foolish things, but at least they reached out in all directions, multiplying risks and opportunities at the same time. There was something good in their turmoil.
On his work in Resistance:
If I could plumb these hearts and consciences— and I felt sure I could— it was because I was blind and for no other reason. When I was very young I had acquired the habit of guessing since I could no longer see, reading signs instead of gestures, and putting them together to build a coherent world around me. What is more, I admit I was madly happy to be doing this work, to have men in front of me, to make them speak out about themselves, to induce them to say things they were not in the habit of saying because these things were set too deep in them— suddenly to hear in their voices the note above all others, the note of confidence. This filled me with an assurance which was very like love. Around me it drew a magic circle of protection, a sign that nothing bad could happen to me. The light which shone in my head was so bright and so strong that it was like joy distilled. Somehow I became invulnerable. Then too I became infallible, or nearly.
none of my friends were hesitating any longer. To tell the truth, many of them were burning to die. Death at twenty is still possible, so much more so than it is later on.
Whether they were Catholics, Jews, Protestants, freethinkers or not thinkers at all, all the men of the Resistance shared the same credo. For them life was not made to be lived halfway.
He gave us the wartime names of five or six of his agents, three girls among them. I was astonished, as I had never dreamed that women could be in the Resistance. But it wouldn’t be long before I found out how wrong I was.
Georges [...] argued that we would never find a girl, still less a number of girls, who could do such heroic deeds. [...] Then Georges got a dressing down from the Chief [...]. “You idiot,” said Philippe, “you will learn something from women every day.”
A thorn in the flesh, really?! Weren't you all fighting Nazis?
The Communist Party was a thorn in the flesh of the Resistance. We had all kinds of proof that the Communists were hard at work. Several hundred thousand copies of L’Humanité were being distributed underground. The Communists were way ahead of us in techniques of sabotage and terrorism. Only in Résistance, Combat and DF there were no Communists. The origin of all these movements was humanist, even Christian.
However it is waged, war is a dirty business. But oh, if only in peacetime men could find a way of being more like the friends I made in time of war.
Betrayal and prison:
If you are a scholar[...]do what I did that night. Reconstruct, out loud, Kant’s arguments in the first chapters of his Critique of Pure Reason. It is hard work and absorbing. But don’t believe any of it. Don’t even believe in yourself. Only God exists. This truth, and it holds good always, becomes a miraculous healing remedy at such a time. Besides, I ask you, who else is there that you can count on? Not men, surely. What men? The SS? Sadists or madmen, or at best enemies patriotically persuaded that it is their duty to dispose of you. If God’s pity does not exist, then there is nothing left.
But to experience this pity you do not need an act of faith. You don’t even need to have been brought up in an organized church. From the moment when you start looking for this pity, you lay hold of it. It lives in the fact that you breathe and have blood pulsing in your temples. If you pay strict attention, the divine pity grows and enfolds you. You are no longer the same person, believe me. And you can say to the Lord: “Thy will be done.” This you can say, and saying it can do you nothing but good. There is forgiveness for every misery. And as misery grows, forgiveness grows along with it.
They were going to shoot him but he couldn’t say when. All he had to hope for was that it wouldn’t be too late. “One might speak without even knowing it. That’s the worst of it,” he said. Robert too had faith. He had it a thousand times more than I. Then tell me, why was he not protected?
In prison, more than ever before, it is within yourself that you must live. If there is a person you cannot do without, not possibly— for instance a girl somewhere outside the walls— do as I did then. Look at her several times a day for a long time. But don’t try to picture her wherever she is at the moment, out there where there is free air everywhere and open doors. You won’t manage it and it will hurt you. Instead, look at her inside yourself. Cut her off from everything that is space. Focus on her all the light you hold within yourself. Don’t be afraid of using it up. Love, thought and life hold so much of this light you don’t even know what to do with it. [...]And for a long time you will not even realize you are in prison.
And now Buchenwald:
There is no truth about the inhuman, any more than there is truth about death; at any rate not on our side, among us as mortal men. Such truth could only exist for our Lord Jesus Christ, absorbed and preserved by him in the name of his Father and ours.
Of the 2,000 Frenchmen who went into Buchenwald with me at the end of January 1944, about thirty survived. According to the count made after the war, during the fifteen months of my stay, in the camp itself and in the commandos which were its direct dependencies, 380,000 men died: Russians, Poles, Germans, Frenchmen, Czechs, Belgians, Dutchmen, Danes, Norwegians, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Romanians. There were even Americans, thirty-four of them, all officers, brothers-in-arms who had been parachuted into the Resistance in Western Europe. There were very few Jews, for Jews only went to Buchenwald through administrative error. They were sent to Lublin, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Theresienstadt, for quick extermination by scientific methods. Our extermination was only to take place after we had been exploited. The process was much slower.
the offices were manned by prisoners, our comrades. One of them, a Pole, learning that I was blind, did not falter for a minute; he merely recorded the fact. But when he found out I was a student at the University of Paris, he slipped in this piece of advice in a muted voice in German: “Never say that again. Once they know you are an intellectual they will kill you. Name a trade, never mind what it is.” My answer came out— I don’t know who dictated it: “Profession: interpreter of French, German and Russian.” Then my fellow prisoner in the office muttered, “Good luck,” and seemed relieved. That’s how I acquired an official profession, entered on the books the first day and recognized as of general use. Without that protection I would not have lasted a week.
For years the SS had so calculated the terror that either it killed or it bewitched. Hundreds of men at Buchenwald were bewitched. The harm done them was so great that it had entered into them body and soul. And now it possessed them. They were no longer victims. They were doing injury in their turn, and doing it methodically. The man in charge of our quarantine barracks was a German, an anti-Nazi who had been there for six years. Rumor had it that once he had been a hero. Now, every day, he killed two or three of us with his own hands, barehanded or with a knife.
In March I had lost all my friends. They had all gone away. A small child was reborn in me, looking everywhere for his mother and not finding her. I was very much afraid of the others and even of myself since I didn’t know how to defend myself. One day out of two, people were stealing my bread and my soup.
But for the unfit like me, they had another system, the Invalids’ Block. Since they were no longer sure of winning the war, mercy had become official with the Nazis. A year earlier being unfit for physical work in the service of the Greater German Reich would have condemned you to death in three days.
The Lord took pity on the poor mortal who was so helpless before him. It is true I was quite unable to help myself. All of us are incapable of helping ourselves. Now I knew it, and knew that it was true of the SS among the first. That was something to make one smile.
through an administrative error his convoy had been taken to Auschwitz. When they arrived, someone on the staff who was more conscientious than the others noticed that the two thousand Frenchmen they had brought there that day were not Jews. So for the time being they put them in a barracks, and a week later shipped them off to Buchenwald. But Georges had had time to see several thousand Jewish men, women and children lined up in a column as they were about to go into gas chambers masquerading as shower rooms. He could still see that sight, and in him it had killed both love and hope.
Memories are too tender, too close to fear. They consume energy. We had to live in the present; each moment had to be absorbed for all that was in it, to satisfy the hunger for life.
when you get your bread ration, don’t hoard it. Eat it right away, greedily, mouthful after mouthful as if each crumb were all the food in the world. When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy. Latch on to the passing minute. Shut off the workings of memory and hope. The amazing thing is that no anguish held out against this treatment for very long. Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half. Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed.
The rich were the ones who did not think of themselves, or only rarely, for a minute or two in an emergency. They were the ones who had given up that the concentration camp was the end of everything, a piece of hell, an unjust punishment, a wrong done them which they had not deserved. They were the ones who were hungry and cold and frightened like all the rest, who didn’t hesitate to say so on occasion[...] but who in the end didn’t care. The rich were the ones who were not really there. Sometimes they had removed themselves entirely by going crazy.
The feeble-minded, the ones who were short on memory and imagination, also did not suffer. They lived from minute to minute, each day for itself, I suppose as beggars do. The odd thing was that it was comforting to be with them. The tramps, the hoboes, the ones who had never had a place to live, stupid and lazy as they were, had gathered up all kinds of secrets about living.
And then, I mustn’t forget, there were also the Russians; not all the Russians, of course, for among them too there were the dark ones, the burdened, especially the ones who clung to Marx, Lenin or Stalin as though they were life preservers. The ones I mean were the Russian workers and the peasants. They did not act like other Europeans. It was as if there were no intimacies for them, and no individual concerns except for the basic affections for their women and children; and even these were not nearly as strong as with us. It was as if they were all combined in a single person. If ever you happened to strike a Russian— and it wasn’t easy to avoid, there were so many occasions— in a minute fifty Russians sprang up all over, to right and left, and made you repent it. On the other hand, if you had done a Russian a good turn, and it didn’t take much, just a smile or silence well timed, then all of a sudden too many Russians to count became your ‘“brothers.” They would willingly have let themselves be killed for you, and sometimes they did just that. I was fortunate enough to be taken into their affections right away. I tried to speak their language. I didn’t talk politics and they didn’t talk about it either.
I was never entirely bereft of joy. But it was a fact and my solid support. Joy I found even in strange byways, in the midst of fear itsself. And fear departed from me, as infection leaves an abscess when it bursts. By the end of a year in Buchenwald I was convinced that life was not at all as I had been taught to believe it, neither life nor society.[...]how could I explain that in my block the only man who had volunteered day and night, for months, to watch over the most violent mad, to calm them down and feed them, to care for the ones with cancer, dysentery, typhus, to bathe them and comfort them, was a person of whom evryone said that in ordinary life he was effeminate, a parlor pederast, a man one would hesitate to associate with? But here he was the good angel, frankly the saint, the only saint in Invalids’ Block. How account for the fact that Dietrich, the German criminal, arrested seven years before for strangling his mother and his wife, had turned brave and generous? Why was he sharing his bread with others at the risk of dying sooner?And why, at the same time, did that honest bourgeois from our country, that small tradesman from the Vendée, father of a family, get up in the night to steal the bread of other men? These shocking things were not what I had read in books. They were there in front of me.I had no way of not seeing them, and they raised all kinds of questions in my mind. And last of all, was it Buchenwald or was it the everyday world, what we call the normal life,which was topsy-turvy?
Another major factor in his happy disposition was his devout Catolicism verging on mysticism. He had no doubt that the internal light burning inside him came straight from Jesus Christ and that it's the hand of god that led him through the horrors of Buchenwald.
Not my cup of tea to look for solace in godly benevolence, but I can understand how he found strength in this belief.
On his blindness and his light:
Immediately, the substance of the universe drew together, redefined and peopled itself anew. I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I knew nothing about, a place which might as well have been outside me as within. But radiance was there, or, to put it more precisely, light. It was a fact, for light was there. I felt indescribable relief, and happiness so great it almost made me laugh. Confidence and gratitude came as if a prayer had been answered. I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together. I saw light and went on seeing it though I was blind.
You always think of sounds beginning and ending abruptly. But now I realized that nothing could be more false. Now my ears heard the sounds almost before they were there, touching me with the tips of their fingers and directing me toward them. Often I seemed to hear people speak before they began talking. Sounds had the same individuality as light. They were neither inside nor outside, they were passing through me. They gave me my bearings in space and put me in touch with things. It was not like signals that they functioned, but like replies.
As soon as my hands came to life they put me in a world where everything was an exchange of pressures. These pressures gathered together in shapes, and each one of the shapes had meaning. As a child I spent hours leaning against objects and letting them lean against me. Any blind person can tell you that this gesture, this exchange, gives him a satisfaction too deep for words.
With smell it was the same as it was with touch— like touch an obvious part of the loving substance of the universe. I began to guess what animals must feel when they sniff the air. Like sound and shape, smell was more distinctive than I used to think it was. There were physical smells and moral ones.
Blindness is an obstacle, but only becomes a misery if folly is added. I tell them to be reassured and never to set themselves against what their small boy or girl is finding out. They should never say: “You can’t know that because you can’t see”; and as infrequently as possible, “Don’t do that, it is dangerous.” For a blind child there is a threat greater than all the wounds and bumps, the scratches and most of the blows, and that is the danger of isolation.
All of us, whether we are blind or not, are terribly greedy. We want things only for ourselves. Even without realizing it, we want the universe to be like us and give us all the room in it. But a blind child learns very quickly that this cannot be. He has to learn it, for every time he forgets that he is not alone in the world he strikes against an object, hurts himself and is called to order. But each time he remembers he is rewarded, for everything comes his way.
On music:
For a blind person music is nourishment, as beauty is for those who see. He needs to receive it, to have it administered at intervals like food. Otherwise a void is created inside him and causes him pain.
I was not a musician, not really. I learned to play the cello. For eight years I practiced scales and did exercises. I played some simple pieces respectably. Once I belonged to a trio and managed not to destroy it altogether. But music was not my language. I excelled in listening to it, but I would never be able to speak it. Music was made for blind people, but some blind people are not made for music. I was among them; I was one of the visual blind.
He used to think women existed solely for decorative and housekeeping purposes:
[...]Aliette failed her exams three weeks later, and that Jean and I passed. For us it was a personal defeat. Fortunately, Aliette, drying a few tears as she read the list that was posted, looked prettier than ever. And she knew very well that we were men, and that men were supposed to be first in this kind of competition. That was only natural.
On philosophers:
As a rule they had chosen a direction which the best of them had been able to follow through an entire volume, in some cases for a lifetime. This was true of Plato and Spinoza. But the choice in itself and their obstinacy in pursuing it were limiting, and prevented them from looking about them. I saw their thinking as to the surface of a sphere, but only at one point, thus losing touch with the reality of the universe which could be nothing less than the sphere as a whole. In this way, the more deductive and systematic a philosopher was, the greater his defeats as I saw them. Poets and most artists said and did many foolish things, but at least they reached out in all directions, multiplying risks and opportunities at the same time. There was something good in their turmoil.
On his work in Resistance:
If I could plumb these hearts and consciences— and I felt sure I could— it was because I was blind and for no other reason. When I was very young I had acquired the habit of guessing since I could no longer see, reading signs instead of gestures, and putting them together to build a coherent world around me. What is more, I admit I was madly happy to be doing this work, to have men in front of me, to make them speak out about themselves, to induce them to say things they were not in the habit of saying because these things were set too deep in them— suddenly to hear in their voices the note above all others, the note of confidence. This filled me with an assurance which was very like love. Around me it drew a magic circle of protection, a sign that nothing bad could happen to me. The light which shone in my head was so bright and so strong that it was like joy distilled. Somehow I became invulnerable. Then too I became infallible, or nearly.
none of my friends were hesitating any longer. To tell the truth, many of them were burning to die. Death at twenty is still possible, so much more so than it is later on.
Whether they were Catholics, Jews, Protestants, freethinkers or not thinkers at all, all the men of the Resistance shared the same credo. For them life was not made to be lived halfway.
He gave us the wartime names of five or six of his agents, three girls among them. I was astonished, as I had never dreamed that women could be in the Resistance. But it wouldn’t be long before I found out how wrong I was.
Georges [...] argued that we would never find a girl, still less a number of girls, who could do such heroic deeds. [...] Then Georges got a dressing down from the Chief [...]. “You idiot,” said Philippe, “you will learn something from women every day.”
A thorn in the flesh, really?! Weren't you all fighting Nazis?
The Communist Party was a thorn in the flesh of the Resistance. We had all kinds of proof that the Communists were hard at work. Several hundred thousand copies of L’Humanité were being distributed underground. The Communists were way ahead of us in techniques of sabotage and terrorism. Only in Résistance, Combat and DF there were no Communists. The origin of all these movements was humanist, even Christian.
However it is waged, war is a dirty business. But oh, if only in peacetime men could find a way of being more like the friends I made in time of war.
Betrayal and prison:
If you are a scholar[...]do what I did that night. Reconstruct, out loud, Kant’s arguments in the first chapters of his Critique of Pure Reason. It is hard work and absorbing. But don’t believe any of it. Don’t even believe in yourself. Only God exists. This truth, and it holds good always, becomes a miraculous healing remedy at such a time. Besides, I ask you, who else is there that you can count on? Not men, surely. What men? The SS? Sadists or madmen, or at best enemies patriotically persuaded that it is their duty to dispose of you. If God’s pity does not exist, then there is nothing left.
But to experience this pity you do not need an act of faith. You don’t even need to have been brought up in an organized church. From the moment when you start looking for this pity, you lay hold of it. It lives in the fact that you breathe and have blood pulsing in your temples. If you pay strict attention, the divine pity grows and enfolds you. You are no longer the same person, believe me. And you can say to the Lord: “Thy will be done.” This you can say, and saying it can do you nothing but good. There is forgiveness for every misery. And as misery grows, forgiveness grows along with it.
They were going to shoot him but he couldn’t say when. All he had to hope for was that it wouldn’t be too late. “One might speak without even knowing it. That’s the worst of it,” he said. Robert too had faith. He had it a thousand times more than I. Then tell me, why was he not protected?
In prison, more than ever before, it is within yourself that you must live. If there is a person you cannot do without, not possibly— for instance a girl somewhere outside the walls— do as I did then. Look at her several times a day for a long time. But don’t try to picture her wherever she is at the moment, out there where there is free air everywhere and open doors. You won’t manage it and it will hurt you. Instead, look at her inside yourself. Cut her off from everything that is space. Focus on her all the light you hold within yourself. Don’t be afraid of using it up. Love, thought and life hold so much of this light you don’t even know what to do with it. [...]And for a long time you will not even realize you are in prison.
And now Buchenwald:
There is no truth about the inhuman, any more than there is truth about death; at any rate not on our side, among us as mortal men. Such truth could only exist for our Lord Jesus Christ, absorbed and preserved by him in the name of his Father and ours.
Of the 2,000 Frenchmen who went into Buchenwald with me at the end of January 1944, about thirty survived. According to the count made after the war, during the fifteen months of my stay, in the camp itself and in the commandos which were its direct dependencies, 380,000 men died: Russians, Poles, Germans, Frenchmen, Czechs, Belgians, Dutchmen, Danes, Norwegians, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Romanians. There were even Americans, thirty-four of them, all officers, brothers-in-arms who had been parachuted into the Resistance in Western Europe. There were very few Jews, for Jews only went to Buchenwald through administrative error. They were sent to Lublin, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Theresienstadt, for quick extermination by scientific methods. Our extermination was only to take place after we had been exploited. The process was much slower.
the offices were manned by prisoners, our comrades. One of them, a Pole, learning that I was blind, did not falter for a minute; he merely recorded the fact. But when he found out I was a student at the University of Paris, he slipped in this piece of advice in a muted voice in German: “Never say that again. Once they know you are an intellectual they will kill you. Name a trade, never mind what it is.” My answer came out— I don’t know who dictated it: “Profession: interpreter of French, German and Russian.” Then my fellow prisoner in the office muttered, “Good luck,” and seemed relieved. That’s how I acquired an official profession, entered on the books the first day and recognized as of general use. Without that protection I would not have lasted a week.
For years the SS had so calculated the terror that either it killed or it bewitched. Hundreds of men at Buchenwald were bewitched. The harm done them was so great that it had entered into them body and soul. And now it possessed them. They were no longer victims. They were doing injury in their turn, and doing it methodically. The man in charge of our quarantine barracks was a German, an anti-Nazi who had been there for six years. Rumor had it that once he had been a hero. Now, every day, he killed two or three of us with his own hands, barehanded or with a knife.
In March I had lost all my friends. They had all gone away. A small child was reborn in me, looking everywhere for his mother and not finding her. I was very much afraid of the others and even of myself since I didn’t know how to defend myself. One day out of two, people were stealing my bread and my soup.
But for the unfit like me, they had another system, the Invalids’ Block. Since they were no longer sure of winning the war, mercy had become official with the Nazis. A year earlier being unfit for physical work in the service of the Greater German Reich would have condemned you to death in three days.
The Lord took pity on the poor mortal who was so helpless before him. It is true I was quite unable to help myself. All of us are incapable of helping ourselves. Now I knew it, and knew that it was true of the SS among the first. That was something to make one smile.
through an administrative error his convoy had been taken to Auschwitz. When they arrived, someone on the staff who was more conscientious than the others noticed that the two thousand Frenchmen they had brought there that day were not Jews. So for the time being they put them in a barracks, and a week later shipped them off to Buchenwald. But Georges had had time to see several thousand Jewish men, women and children lined up in a column as they were about to go into gas chambers masquerading as shower rooms. He could still see that sight, and in him it had killed both love and hope.
Memories are too tender, too close to fear. They consume energy. We had to live in the present; each moment had to be absorbed for all that was in it, to satisfy the hunger for life.
when you get your bread ration, don’t hoard it. Eat it right away, greedily, mouthful after mouthful as if each crumb were all the food in the world. When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy. Latch on to the passing minute. Shut off the workings of memory and hope. The amazing thing is that no anguish held out against this treatment for very long. Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half. Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed.
The rich were the ones who did not think of themselves, or only rarely, for a minute or two in an emergency. They were the ones who had given up that the concentration camp was the end of everything, a piece of hell, an unjust punishment, a wrong done them which they had not deserved. They were the ones who were hungry and cold and frightened like all the rest, who didn’t hesitate to say so on occasion[...] but who in the end didn’t care. The rich were the ones who were not really there. Sometimes they had removed themselves entirely by going crazy.
The feeble-minded, the ones who were short on memory and imagination, also did not suffer. They lived from minute to minute, each day for itself, I suppose as beggars do. The odd thing was that it was comforting to be with them. The tramps, the hoboes, the ones who had never had a place to live, stupid and lazy as they were, had gathered up all kinds of secrets about living.
And then, I mustn’t forget, there were also the Russians; not all the Russians, of course, for among them too there were the dark ones, the burdened, especially the ones who clung to Marx, Lenin or Stalin as though they were life preservers. The ones I mean were the Russian workers and the peasants. They did not act like other Europeans. It was as if there were no intimacies for them, and no individual concerns except for the basic affections for their women and children; and even these were not nearly as strong as with us. It was as if they were all combined in a single person. If ever you happened to strike a Russian— and it wasn’t easy to avoid, there were so many occasions— in a minute fifty Russians sprang up all over, to right and left, and made you repent it. On the other hand, if you had done a Russian a good turn, and it didn’t take much, just a smile or silence well timed, then all of a sudden too many Russians to count became your ‘“brothers.” They would willingly have let themselves be killed for you, and sometimes they did just that. I was fortunate enough to be taken into their affections right away. I tried to speak their language. I didn’t talk politics and they didn’t talk about it either.
I was never entirely bereft of joy. But it was a fact and my solid support. Joy I found even in strange byways, in the midst of fear itsself. And fear departed from me, as infection leaves an abscess when it bursts. By the end of a year in Buchenwald I was convinced that life was not at all as I had been taught to believe it, neither life nor society.[...]how could I explain that in my block the only man who had volunteered day and night, for months, to watch over the most violent mad, to calm them down and feed them, to care for the ones with cancer, dysentery, typhus, to bathe them and comfort them, was a person of whom evryone said that in ordinary life he was effeminate, a parlor pederast, a man one would hesitate to associate with? But here he was the good angel, frankly the saint, the only saint in Invalids’ Block. How account for the fact that Dietrich, the German criminal, arrested seven years before for strangling his mother and his wife, had turned brave and generous? Why was he sharing his bread with others at the risk of dying sooner?And why, at the same time, did that honest bourgeois from our country, that small tradesman from the Vendée, father of a family, get up in the night to steal the bread of other men? These shocking things were not what I had read in books. They were there in front of me.I had no way of not seeing them, and they raised all kinds of questions in my mind. And last of all, was it Buchenwald or was it the everyday world, what we call the normal life,which was topsy-turvy?
November 27, 2012
I was deeply affected by "And There Was Light," the astonishing autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, who, though blinded at age eight, was a leader of the French Resistance in World War II.
A turning point in Lusseyran’s life was his miraculous return from the dead in Buchenwald, a notorious German concentration camp. It was his sickness that rescued him and bestowed the grace of continuous joy. His experience is so profound that it is difficult to fully appreciate the transformation he underwent—from fear and certain death to the very embodiment of happiness and hope.
What he wrote about his happy childhood also resonated with me: "I felt sure that nothing was unfriendly, that the branches I used to swing on would hold firm, and that the paths, no matter how winding, would take me to a place where I would not be afraid; that all paths, eventually, would lead me back to my family."
While Lusseyran doesn't provide much factual detail about his time in Buchenwald, he offers plenty of emotional biography, which I find infinitely more fascinating. I came away extraordinarily impressed with his courage, his integrity, his loyalty to those he loved and the faith—not in God per se, but in the joy of life itself—that kept him alive and happy in the worst of circumstances.
A turning point in Lusseyran’s life was his miraculous return from the dead in Buchenwald, a notorious German concentration camp. It was his sickness that rescued him and bestowed the grace of continuous joy. His experience is so profound that it is difficult to fully appreciate the transformation he underwent—from fear and certain death to the very embodiment of happiness and hope.
What he wrote about his happy childhood also resonated with me: "I felt sure that nothing was unfriendly, that the branches I used to swing on would hold firm, and that the paths, no matter how winding, would take me to a place where I would not be afraid; that all paths, eventually, would lead me back to my family."
While Lusseyran doesn't provide much factual detail about his time in Buchenwald, he offers plenty of emotional biography, which I find infinitely more fascinating. I came away extraordinarily impressed with his courage, his integrity, his loyalty to those he loved and the faith—not in God per se, but in the joy of life itself—that kept him alive and happy in the worst of circumstances.
April 27, 2015
This is a difficult book to classify as being of any one genre as it really covers many, but how one would rate it would depend in part on what one was expecting at the outset.It took me just over two weeks to finish reading it which is an unusually lengthy time for me. The author was blinded in an accident at the age of 8 and most of the first 40% of the book is his memoir of how he lived and flourished through that experience and his early teen years. As a person who has my own struggles with vision (nowhere near as severe as his)his response was inspirational. As the title of the book says,"And there was light...". For Lusseyran, he always felt that he was filled with great light and that it was the presence of God within him therefore there was no need to mourn or feel he was suffering from an infliction.He isn't dogmatic about this and the book is not an attempt to preach, but his focus in telling his story is in great part to share the joy and emotional strength that he felt.
Yes this book is set in war-time and it does tell his story as a leader in the resistance in France, but for those expecting detailed accounts of different resistance efforts,this is probably not the book you are looking for.He only uses first names for those he is involved with and only details his own experiences. This includes his capture by the Germans and the lengthy time (nearly 15 months)that he spent at Buchenwald coming very close to death and managing to survive only by accepting his illness as a gift from God.Sadly, this man was killed in an automobile accident at the age of 47 - a death too soon.
In the epilogue for the book, Lusseyran shared that he wrote the book to express his gratitude to America for welcoming him by sharing two truths which were intimately known to him. To Quote: "The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us, even if we have no eyes."
Yes this book is set in war-time and it does tell his story as a leader in the resistance in France, but for those expecting detailed accounts of different resistance efforts,this is probably not the book you are looking for.He only uses first names for those he is involved with and only details his own experiences. This includes his capture by the Germans and the lengthy time (nearly 15 months)that he spent at Buchenwald coming very close to death and managing to survive only by accepting his illness as a gift from God.Sadly, this man was killed in an automobile accident at the age of 47 - a death too soon.
In the epilogue for the book, Lusseyran shared that he wrote the book to express his gratitude to America for welcoming him by sharing two truths which were intimately known to him. To Quote: "The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us, even if we have no eyes."
April 30, 2017
All the concentration camp stories are horrific and so is the one of Jacques L.
But this book is also about his blindness and how he experienced it. He called himself a visual blind, he had an inner way of seeing. It reminded me of a documentary in which blind children could describe the drawing that was put into their hands. I'm sure they had the same ability JL had.
How sad that he survived Buchenwald but died in a car crash when he was 46. It was an interesting read.
But this book is also about his blindness and how he experienced it. He called himself a visual blind, he had an inner way of seeing. It reminded me of a documentary in which blind children could describe the drawing that was put into their hands. I'm sure they had the same ability JL had.
How sad that he survived Buchenwald but died in a car crash when he was 46. It was an interesting read.
March 31, 2012
I found it difficult to believe at first that this man was a leader in the Resistance during WWII as a teenager - a blind teenager. After getting to know him by reading his autobiography, however, I can readily see how he accomplished this (and more). Some people, by virtue of their character & inborn traits, are natural leaders. Jacquess Lusseyran was obviously a born leader.
There is much to learn about hope, life, strength, survival, courage, and humanity from this book and I am definetly a richer person for having read it. Jacques neither blamed God or the boy responsible for the accident taking his sight at the age of 8, forever. Instead, he learned how to "see" in every other way and eventually began to thank God for taking his sight. As he describes those around him during the years following the accident, I learned about friendship as he describes those kinds of people worth surrounding oneself with - I find myself wanting to be those kind of people and to raise my children to be like them.
He described throughout the autobiography a kind of light that could only come from within and, from that light, he seemed to draw courage during the Occupation of France, arrest & interrogation by the Gestapo, and life in a prison camp. He tells his readers exactly how he & the others survived and gives us all a message of hope.
This was a Book Club read for me and there was SO much for my group to discuss: history, religion, the source of strength, human nature, defying the odds, over-coming obstacles of all kinds.
There is much to learn about hope, life, strength, survival, courage, and humanity from this book and I am definetly a richer person for having read it. Jacques neither blamed God or the boy responsible for the accident taking his sight at the age of 8, forever. Instead, he learned how to "see" in every other way and eventually began to thank God for taking his sight. As he describes those around him during the years following the accident, I learned about friendship as he describes those kinds of people worth surrounding oneself with - I find myself wanting to be those kind of people and to raise my children to be like them.
He described throughout the autobiography a kind of light that could only come from within and, from that light, he seemed to draw courage during the Occupation of France, arrest & interrogation by the Gestapo, and life in a prison camp. He tells his readers exactly how he & the others survived and gives us all a message of hope.
This was a Book Club read for me and there was SO much for my group to discuss: history, religion, the source of strength, human nature, defying the odds, over-coming obstacles of all kinds.
April 5, 2023
Before leaving my review I make a small disclaimer. I read Et La Lumiere Fut (And There Was Light) in French and not English since I wanted to experience the book in its original language as well as to practice my French. However, I am purposefully leaving my review in English to make it accessible to more readers.
And There Was Light is an enthralling tale of one blind man's poignant struggle for survival against insurmountable odds. Jacques Lusseyran shares a deep insight into what it means for him find his place in this world as a blind person. This is in fact the subject of about 3/4ths of the book, while the last 1/4 or so covers his experiences as a Nazi prisoner. What I enjoyed most about And There Was Light was the deep philosophical insights that Lusseyran shared on life and happiness. It reminded me of a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre "Everything has been figured out, except how to live." I think Lusseyran really captures "how to live" through his autobiography, especially when he shares how he survived the indescribably harrowing experience of Buchenwald concentration camp. Another interesting topic that And There Was Light touched on was the obscure philosophy of Anthroposophy which was founded by Rudolph Steiner. It seems to have had a profound influence on Jacques and his approach to life and spirituality which is evident throughout the book. The only minor critique I have of And There Was Light is that at times, especially in the beginning of the book, I found it very longwinded and overly detailed in regards his blindness, which made it hard for me to get into the story at first. Perhaps this may be due to the French language version which I read, since French can be quite flowery and verbose. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone in need of inspiration in life, as Jacques Lusseyran's life story is truly amazing!
And There Was Light is an enthralling tale of one blind man's poignant struggle for survival against insurmountable odds. Jacques Lusseyran shares a deep insight into what it means for him find his place in this world as a blind person. This is in fact the subject of about 3/4ths of the book, while the last 1/4 or so covers his experiences as a Nazi prisoner. What I enjoyed most about And There Was Light was the deep philosophical insights that Lusseyran shared on life and happiness. It reminded me of a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre "Everything has been figured out, except how to live." I think Lusseyran really captures "how to live" through his autobiography, especially when he shares how he survived the indescribably harrowing experience of Buchenwald concentration camp. Another interesting topic that And There Was Light touched on was the obscure philosophy of Anthroposophy which was founded by Rudolph Steiner. It seems to have had a profound influence on Jacques and his approach to life and spirituality which is evident throughout the book. The only minor critique I have of And There Was Light is that at times, especially in the beginning of the book, I found it very longwinded and overly detailed in regards his blindness, which made it hard for me to get into the story at first. Perhaps this may be due to the French language version which I read, since French can be quite flowery and verbose. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone in need of inspiration in life, as Jacques Lusseyran's life story is truly amazing!
October 17, 2012
I decided to give this book a 5 star because of the wow factor his life was, rather than because it is a page turner or exceptionally well written.
It took me almost 2 weeks to read...unheard of for me. However, to appreciate what he is trying to get across to you, you have to take it slow and soak it up. The beginning of the book is the hardest/slowest to get through as he talks about adjusting and living with no 'sight', a truly foreign thought for us. One that even the best imagination would have a hard time fully grasping. Once he starts talking about actual events and the war, the pace picks up drastically..at least it did for me.
I told Mark last night that I want to meet him when I go to the other side. The Lord truly had an amazing work for him to do. He was given the resources (yes, blindness was one) and was guided to fulfill that purpose.
I realized a couple of days ago that I will be out of town when the book club is discussing this and I am sad. There is so much to talk about. You all will have a great discussion!
It took me almost 2 weeks to read...unheard of for me. However, to appreciate what he is trying to get across to you, you have to take it slow and soak it up. The beginning of the book is the hardest/slowest to get through as he talks about adjusting and living with no 'sight', a truly foreign thought for us. One that even the best imagination would have a hard time fully grasping. Once he starts talking about actual events and the war, the pace picks up drastically..at least it did for me.
I told Mark last night that I want to meet him when I go to the other side. The Lord truly had an amazing work for him to do. He was given the resources (yes, blindness was one) and was guided to fulfill that purpose.
I realized a couple of days ago that I will be out of town when the book club is discussing this and I am sad. There is so much to talk about. You all will have a great discussion!
May 9, 2008
I hate it when I start a book and don't finish it but I just couldn't get into this one. It's an amazing story about a blind Frenchman during WWII. My problem is his style of writing. He describes every teeny tiny detail in a way that doesn't make any sense to me. I want to read his story, but I wish it was written by someone else.
June 2, 2022
The extraordinary memoir of Jacques Lusseyran will probably primarily be known to most readers as a survivor memoir written by a member of the French resistance who endured more than a year of captivity in the Buchenwald concentration camp, which is made all the more astonishing by the fact of its authors total blindness. But as with some other well-known representatives of the literature - here I think especially of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning - Lusseyran performs a kind of philosophical and spiritual alchemy on the base matter of his experience to extract a healing stone that his readers may use to connect to a deeper sense of possibility.
If that is not enough for one short book, it also includes a sustained meditation on the experience of blindness in a manner that will greatly appeal to fans of Oliver Sacks. Of particular interest to this reader was the work the author put into disabusing his audience of the notion that the experience of blindness is one of darkness, as a sighted person is likely to suppose, since that is the condition in which they themselves cannot see. For Lusseyran, at least, the experience of blindness is one of light, and here he clearly means light in an expansive sense, and this series of reflections will be of great interest to the phenomenologist and the philosopher.
Light for Lusseyran means the experience of illumination in all of its myriad senses, and all of them, he tells us, are available to the blind person - some of them even more readily than to the sighted person. I thought of Thomas Aquinas' conception of claritas, which does mean illumination or brightness, but also something like intelligibility, and I thought as well of the Buddhist philosopher's conception of the essence of awareness as self-luminous. These two conceptions link light to something more, and, I think, in the same way.
Lusseyran's story is astonishing, and this book is loaded with many insightful gems about how he came to endure his condition with a resilience that reminded me of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Han - a kind of joy within the very real and very profound suffering, and a reminder that both are possible at once.
Not all of his insights landed for me, because the author's character is rather different from my own. He connects the idea of light with the feeling of direct apprehension and inspiration, and throughout his memoirs he projects a constant sense of certainty, where I tend to regard certainty with suspicion. It may have been a support in terrible times, but it does not strike me as particularly useful in less grave circumstances.
For example, when he writes of a hidden radio, the discovery of which by the Nazis would have surely led to the death of thousands (his words), he does not pause to ask whether the access to information afforded by this radio, no matter how highly-valued, is worth that risk, or if he has the right to take that risk on their behalf. There is a kind of unyielding faith that fills the book and animates his general stance to life that does not resonate for me - I prefer the attitude of Thich Nhat Han, who asks us in such moments to ask ourselves with complete humility, am I really so sure?
This is an interesting philosophical question that I think we may bring to bear when reading literature of this kind, as well as end-of-life literature. It is not clear to me that the clearest light on life as its ordinarily lived is necessarily thrown from the perimeters of human extremity, though the testimony of people at the limits is often valued as if the certainties that arise in such hours are more true and more real than our ordinary perspective. I'm not sure, by analogy, that the ravenous person is necessarily the best judge of food, though certainly they will see it in a different way.
This is a question that Lusseyran is self-conscious enough to consider, and wonders for us if it is the position of life that is inverted, or the position of extremity.
This is a fascinating and worthwhile book that will be intriguing to readers of many interests.
If that is not enough for one short book, it also includes a sustained meditation on the experience of blindness in a manner that will greatly appeal to fans of Oliver Sacks. Of particular interest to this reader was the work the author put into disabusing his audience of the notion that the experience of blindness is one of darkness, as a sighted person is likely to suppose, since that is the condition in which they themselves cannot see. For Lusseyran, at least, the experience of blindness is one of light, and here he clearly means light in an expansive sense, and this series of reflections will be of great interest to the phenomenologist and the philosopher.
Light for Lusseyran means the experience of illumination in all of its myriad senses, and all of them, he tells us, are available to the blind person - some of them even more readily than to the sighted person. I thought of Thomas Aquinas' conception of claritas, which does mean illumination or brightness, but also something like intelligibility, and I thought as well of the Buddhist philosopher's conception of the essence of awareness as self-luminous. These two conceptions link light to something more, and, I think, in the same way.
Lusseyran's story is astonishing, and this book is loaded with many insightful gems about how he came to endure his condition with a resilience that reminded me of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Han - a kind of joy within the very real and very profound suffering, and a reminder that both are possible at once.
Not all of his insights landed for me, because the author's character is rather different from my own. He connects the idea of light with the feeling of direct apprehension and inspiration, and throughout his memoirs he projects a constant sense of certainty, where I tend to regard certainty with suspicion. It may have been a support in terrible times, but it does not strike me as particularly useful in less grave circumstances.
For example, when he writes of a hidden radio, the discovery of which by the Nazis would have surely led to the death of thousands (his words), he does not pause to ask whether the access to information afforded by this radio, no matter how highly-valued, is worth that risk, or if he has the right to take that risk on their behalf. There is a kind of unyielding faith that fills the book and animates his general stance to life that does not resonate for me - I prefer the attitude of Thich Nhat Han, who asks us in such moments to ask ourselves with complete humility, am I really so sure?
This is an interesting philosophical question that I think we may bring to bear when reading literature of this kind, as well as end-of-life literature. It is not clear to me that the clearest light on life as its ordinarily lived is necessarily thrown from the perimeters of human extremity, though the testimony of people at the limits is often valued as if the certainties that arise in such hours are more true and more real than our ordinary perspective. I'm not sure, by analogy, that the ravenous person is necessarily the best judge of food, though certainly they will see it in a different way.
This is a question that Lusseyran is self-conscious enough to consider, and wonders for us if it is the position of life that is inverted, or the position of extremity.
This is a fascinating and worthwhile book that will be intriguing to readers of many interests.
March 24, 2011
What does it really mean to see? This book lets you know. It helps you better understand those spiritual feelings which direct us much better. What an inspiring man!
August 22, 2019
Have you ever been at a performance of some exquisite music and at the end, there was this breathless silence of several seconds--the whole audience was absorbed in rapture and could not even move to clap? This is how I feel after reading this book. Writing a review now is difficult because it ends this period of silent rumination and appreciation in my head. Now I stand to clap.
First of all--this man, Jacques Lusseyran. What an incredible and beautiful soul. I felt like it was a privilege to "meet" him and get to know him. He truly was a hero and champion. My life is better for having spent time with him in this book.
The book starts like a beautiful fiction story. I seriously had to turn to the back cover a few times during the first chapter to check that it was truly a memoir. Lusseyran's prose is lovely and poetic. "My parents carried me along and that, I am sure, is why through all my childhood I never touched ground. I could go away and come back. Objects had no weight and I never became entangled in the web of things. I passed between dangers and fears as light passes through a mirror. That was the joy of my childhood; the magic armor which, once put on, protects for a lifetime." I loved these passages about his childhood. They resonated very strongly with me and my personal experience.
After reading a few chapters of this library book slowly to really savor the prose, I knew I would need to own this one so I could a) underline all the beautiful passages and b) not keep a library book way past its due date! I ordered myself a copy and have been savoring it over the last couple of months.
Lusseyran is blinded in an accident at age 8 and says, "Every day since then I have thanked heaven for making me blind while I was still a child not quite eight years old." What an incredible and intriguing thing to say. How can someone make such a bold statement--to be grateful for such a misfortune? Part of that answer is Lusseyran's ability to stay optimistic and count his blessings--to choose the light that is the theme of his book and life. And part of it is the gifts that sightlessness brought him.
He actually quickly finds that he is able to discern light as he develops an extra sense without his visual sight. "I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. ... I was not light myself, I knew that, but bathed in it as an element which blindness had suddenly brought much closer. I could feel light rising, spreading, resting on objects, giving them form, then leaving them." He quickly finds that his ability to discern this light depends on his actions: "I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes ... All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light." So you can see how his blindness helped him become this really admirable person.
The ability to see beyond the visible comes in later as a valuable skill Lusseyran uses to screen potential members of a French resistance group in Nazi-occupied Paris. He's implicitly trusted to pick out the possible spies. And incredibly, he does. In time, he becomes a high-ranking leader in an organization that prints and distributes news bulletins at great potential peril to everyone involved. I had a hard time putting the book down during this section because I was so worried about the terrible danger Jacques and his friends were in.
If you are a high school teacher and want a book teenagers can relate to as they learn about WWII, this is it. Most of Lusseyran's story is from the time he was 8 until he was released from Buchenwald concentration camp at age 20. He perfectly captures what it feels like to be a teenager, to have a best friend who's an extension of himself, to fall in love with the same girl that they hardly know and have a wedge driven between them, to have passions and desires he doesn't know what to do with, to throw himself into the cause of the resistance and find himself an unexpected leader. In some ways he's like a true Peter Parker of the resistance :), battling for his right as an "invalid" to carry a demanding load at university during the day and secretly fighting bad guys at night.
Even though the story focuses on the experiences of a child/teen, the story is totally accessible to adult readers as well. Lusseyran shares a fascinating window into the French resistance, the treatment of prisoners being held by Nazis for interrogation, and the Buchenwald experience. And through it all, his optimism and ability to seek the light inspires. Surprisingly, Buchenwald, although ostensibly the climax of the story, was also the shortest section. So if you have avoided books like Night that are heavy on the concentration camp experience, this is a good choice for you.
This beautiful memoir has a unique point of view with a wonderful narrator you will want to know for yourself. I appreciated how it built on what I knew about Europe in WWII from other sources and writers and showed a different side through the experience of someone both blind and in the resistance. Move this book to the top of your to-read list. It's a true page-turner, lovely to read, a story worth experiencing, and a writer you'll be a better person for knowing.
P.S. How can I not fill this review with quotations from the book? OK, just one more for the road, a swoon-worthy passage about a childhood crush he meets at the seashore:
"She came into my world like a great red star, or perhaps more like a ripe cherry. The only thing I knew for sure was that she was bright and red. I thought her lovely, and her beauty was so gentle that I could no longer go home at night and sleep away from her, because part of my light left me when I did. To get it all back I had to find her again. It was just as if she were bringing me light in her hands, her hair, her bare feet on the sand, and in the sound of her voice."
First of all--this man, Jacques Lusseyran. What an incredible and beautiful soul. I felt like it was a privilege to "meet" him and get to know him. He truly was a hero and champion. My life is better for having spent time with him in this book.
The book starts like a beautiful fiction story. I seriously had to turn to the back cover a few times during the first chapter to check that it was truly a memoir. Lusseyran's prose is lovely and poetic. "My parents carried me along and that, I am sure, is why through all my childhood I never touched ground. I could go away and come back. Objects had no weight and I never became entangled in the web of things. I passed between dangers and fears as light passes through a mirror. That was the joy of my childhood; the magic armor which, once put on, protects for a lifetime." I loved these passages about his childhood. They resonated very strongly with me and my personal experience.
After reading a few chapters of this library book slowly to really savor the prose, I knew I would need to own this one so I could a) underline all the beautiful passages and b) not keep a library book way past its due date! I ordered myself a copy and have been savoring it over the last couple of months.
Lusseyran is blinded in an accident at age 8 and says, "Every day since then I have thanked heaven for making me blind while I was still a child not quite eight years old." What an incredible and intriguing thing to say. How can someone make such a bold statement--to be grateful for such a misfortune? Part of that answer is Lusseyran's ability to stay optimistic and count his blessings--to choose the light that is the theme of his book and life. And part of it is the gifts that sightlessness brought him.
He actually quickly finds that he is able to discern light as he develops an extra sense without his visual sight. "I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. ... I was not light myself, I knew that, but bathed in it as an element which blindness had suddenly brought much closer. I could feel light rising, spreading, resting on objects, giving them form, then leaving them." He quickly finds that his ability to discern this light depends on his actions: "I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes ... All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light." So you can see how his blindness helped him become this really admirable person.
The ability to see beyond the visible comes in later as a valuable skill Lusseyran uses to screen potential members of a French resistance group in Nazi-occupied Paris. He's implicitly trusted to pick out the possible spies. And incredibly, he does. In time, he becomes a high-ranking leader in an organization that prints and distributes news bulletins at great potential peril to everyone involved. I had a hard time putting the book down during this section because I was so worried about the terrible danger Jacques and his friends were in.
If you are a high school teacher and want a book teenagers can relate to as they learn about WWII, this is it. Most of Lusseyran's story is from the time he was 8 until he was released from Buchenwald concentration camp at age 20. He perfectly captures what it feels like to be a teenager, to have a best friend who's an extension of himself, to fall in love with the same girl that they hardly know and have a wedge driven between them, to have passions and desires he doesn't know what to do with, to throw himself into the cause of the resistance and find himself an unexpected leader. In some ways he's like a true Peter Parker of the resistance :), battling for his right as an "invalid" to carry a demanding load at university during the day and secretly fighting bad guys at night.
Even though the story focuses on the experiences of a child/teen, the story is totally accessible to adult readers as well. Lusseyran shares a fascinating window into the French resistance, the treatment of prisoners being held by Nazis for interrogation, and the Buchenwald experience. And through it all, his optimism and ability to seek the light inspires. Surprisingly, Buchenwald, although ostensibly the climax of the story, was also the shortest section. So if you have avoided books like Night that are heavy on the concentration camp experience, this is a good choice for you.
This beautiful memoir has a unique point of view with a wonderful narrator you will want to know for yourself. I appreciated how it built on what I knew about Europe in WWII from other sources and writers and showed a different side through the experience of someone both blind and in the resistance. Move this book to the top of your to-read list. It's a true page-turner, lovely to read, a story worth experiencing, and a writer you'll be a better person for knowing.
P.S. How can I not fill this review with quotations from the book? OK, just one more for the road, a swoon-worthy passage about a childhood crush he meets at the seashore:
"She came into my world like a great red star, or perhaps more like a ripe cherry. The only thing I knew for sure was that she was bright and red. I thought her lovely, and her beauty was so gentle that I could no longer go home at night and sleep away from her, because part of my light left me when I did. To get it all back I had to find her again. It was just as if she were bringing me light in her hands, her hair, her bare feet on the sand, and in the sound of her voice."
May 18, 2021
After reading The Paris Dressmaker I was left wondering if there were any blind people within the French Resistance. This often happens when I read historical fiction. I wonder where I, as a blind person, would fit within the story. And so I look to the stories of real people who lived during that time, to find the details of blind people that have been recorded. My research took me to jacques lusseyran, and so I borrowed his autobiography from the library.
Jacques went blind at the age of seven. By 1938 when he was 14 he had learnt German, and by the age of 17 he had formed a resistance group with other students. In 1943 he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. This book tells the story of his early life.
I really love his general commentary on adapting to life as a blind person. The way he describes blindness really resonated with me. Although I never had sight, so can't reflect on the before and after as he does, the ways in which he describes using sound as a blind person are exactly how I would, if I had the right words.
His writing is incredibly detailed, he describes every action and experience in such depth. I know this might discourage some readers, but I found it a wonderful reflection on life as a blind person. The intimacy and need to touch, the significance of sound. Discovering the world piece by piece, whether with hands or ears.
I particularly love his attitude towards blindness, and how he presents blindness as something which altered his life, but which is not tragic or negative. In fact, he is very clear that it is the perceptions of sighted people that present the greatest danger, not blindness or the world around a blind person. This is also true to my own experiences. So often I am held back because others fear for me, or deny me information, not because of my blindness. So much of what he writes about being a blind person, and the need for sighted people to step back and let blind people truly live, is still extremely relevant today.
I had to smile when he wrote about music, and how it was incredibly important to him, but that he was not a good musician. I strongly relate to this, as I love music, but I am not a blind person who can play it well.
What really fascinated me about his story isn't just that he was a member of the Resistance, though I was eager to read more about this, but the education he received which led up to this. Jacques attended his local public school, learning braille and returning to study with his sighted classmates. In the 1930s, certainly in England and the United States, this was unheard of. I imagine that the situation was very similar in France. The fact that he went blind, learnt braille so quickly, and that his parents made sure he was educated at the school he'd attended when he was sighted, was absolutely incredible. He writes very honestly about the ways in which he wasn't taken seriously, particularly after the Nazis occupied France. And how, even after the war, he was denied the right to teach for many years.
Jacques writes in detail about his friend Jean, and the importance of their relationship and how it changed his life. I could feel the depth of his love for his friend in every word he wrote, so much so that there were tears in my eyes as I read. Their relationship was precious, and I'm not sure that any words I use to try and describe it will do it justice. He writes about many of his other friends growing up, sadly, few of them survived the war.
The ease and freedom of his childhood suddenly changed to the fear and uncertainty of war. And with it began his acts of resistance. First, knowledge. His pursuit of learning, so that he might understand the radio broadcasts. And second, direct action. I won't write too much about his life within the Resistance, because I think people must read it for themselves. These were powerful and heart-breaking chapters that will stay with me for a long time.
I had no idea that he had founded such a big group. I thought, when I first read about him, that he had perhaps set up a cell, or small set of cells, within the Resistance movement. But he was responsible for the organisation of over 600 people who worked together to resist the Nazi occupation of France. Remember that he was a blind person in 1941, when most blind people would never have had the resources or skills to do such a thing. His story is incredible.
I won't write anything about his time in Buchenwald concentration camp. There are no words I could use to describe it. You must read his own account.
This was a beautiful, determine account of blindness, war, and the life of one man who chose to do the right thing. It is desperately sad, but also filled with hope.
Jacques went blind at the age of seven. By 1938 when he was 14 he had learnt German, and by the age of 17 he had formed a resistance group with other students. In 1943 he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. This book tells the story of his early life.
I really love his general commentary on adapting to life as a blind person. The way he describes blindness really resonated with me. Although I never had sight, so can't reflect on the before and after as he does, the ways in which he describes using sound as a blind person are exactly how I would, if I had the right words.
Sounds had the same individuality as light. They were neither inside nor outside, they were passing through me. They gave me my bearings in space and put me in touch with things. It was not like signals that they functioned, but like replies.
His writing is incredibly detailed, he describes every action and experience in such depth. I know this might discourage some readers, but I found it a wonderful reflection on life as a blind person. The intimacy and need to touch, the significance of sound. Discovering the world piece by piece, whether with hands or ears.
I particularly love his attitude towards blindness, and how he presents blindness as something which altered his life, but which is not tragic or negative. In fact, he is very clear that it is the perceptions of sighted people that present the greatest danger, not blindness or the world around a blind person. This is also true to my own experiences. So often I am held back because others fear for me, or deny me information, not because of my blindness. So much of what he writes about being a blind person, and the need for sighted people to step back and let blind people truly live, is still extremely relevant today.
But it is time to make it clear that, along with many marvelous things, great dangers lie in wait for a blind child. I am not speaking of physical dangers, which can well be circumvented, nor of any danger which blindness itself brings about. I am speaking of dangers which come from the inexperience of people who still have their eyes. If I have been so fortunate myself — and I insist that I have — it is because I have always been protected from perils of that sort.
I had to smile when he wrote about music, and how it was incredibly important to him, but that he was not a good musician. I strongly relate to this, as I love music, but I am not a blind person who can play it well.
Music was made for blind people, but some blind people are not made for music.
What really fascinated me about his story isn't just that he was a member of the Resistance, though I was eager to read more about this, but the education he received which led up to this. Jacques attended his local public school, learning braille and returning to study with his sighted classmates. In the 1930s, certainly in England and the United States, this was unheard of. I imagine that the situation was very similar in France. The fact that he went blind, learnt braille so quickly, and that his parents made sure he was educated at the school he'd attended when he was sighted, was absolutely incredible. He writes very honestly about the ways in which he wasn't taken seriously, particularly after the Nazis occupied France. And how, even after the war, he was denied the right to teach for many years.
Jacques writes in detail about his friend Jean, and the importance of their relationship and how it changed his life. I could feel the depth of his love for his friend in every word he wrote, so much so that there were tears in my eyes as I read. Their relationship was precious, and I'm not sure that any words I use to try and describe it will do it justice. He writes about many of his other friends growing up, sadly, few of them survived the war.
The ease and freedom of his childhood suddenly changed to the fear and uncertainty of war. And with it began his acts of resistance. First, knowledge. His pursuit of learning, so that he might understand the radio broadcasts. And second, direct action. I won't write too much about his life within the Resistance, because I think people must read it for themselves. These were powerful and heart-breaking chapters that will stay with me for a long time.
I had no idea that he had founded such a big group. I thought, when I first read about him, that he had perhaps set up a cell, or small set of cells, within the Resistance movement. But he was responsible for the organisation of over 600 people who worked together to resist the Nazi occupation of France. Remember that he was a blind person in 1941, when most blind people would never have had the resources or skills to do such a thing. His story is incredible.
I won't write anything about his time in Buchenwald concentration camp. There are no words I could use to describe it. You must read his own account.
This was a beautiful, determine account of blindness, war, and the life of one man who chose to do the right thing. It is desperately sad, but also filled with hope.
September 19, 2014
Lusseyran was sighted at birth, but a childhood accident caused him to lose his vision. Neither Lusseyran nor his parents--comfortable members of the petit bourgeoisie--let his blindness define him in the way that most people living in the more developed nations of the early 20th century would have done. Instead, they promoted his mental and physical development and sacrificed some of their own comfort to be sure their son continued to receive an education, although the law didn't guarantee him one. In return, he gave not only his parents but the world a hero, one who became a leader of the French Resistance.
I have heard it suggested that those who lose one sense make up for it with the others, and so those whose eyes no longer see, or see nothing except shadow and light, hear, smell, touch and taste more acutely. Lusseyran claims that even as a child, he navigated his home town largely by smell; the baker was this way, and the creamery that way. And so the foundation was laid.
Though his education was challenged by instructors who were reluctant to have a blind student present, and who sometimes threw up nearly impossible requirements, such as reluctance to permit him the use of the braille typewriter his parents bought for him, yet others inspired him and moved him forward. Teachers, many of us at least, aspire to be someone like Jacques's history teacher. He describes this man's fire, and the bond that his passion for his subject and his vocation created:
"He wanted us to be exactly as we really were, funny if we couldn't help it, furious if we were angry...his learning made us gasp. He made numbers and facts pour down on us like hail...the syllabus for history stopped at 1918...but for him this was no obstacle, for he would go ahead without any syllabus. He went past all the barriers..."
The teacher would continue to teach at the end of the school day, excusing anyone who wanted to leave (and here I think of the yellow school buses that constrict the schedules of US public school students so often now). He says that everyone stayed. "Naturally."
The dynamic time in which he lived no doubt was responsible for much of their enthusiasm; history was clearly being created with each breath they took. Their history teacher told them--relying upon texts he had read in the original Russian--of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the Stalinism that had taken hold thereafter, of the purges. He spoke of the United States, Roosevelt, of initiative and imagination triumphant.
And so Lusseyran was not yet past adolescence when he felt he had a duty to change the world, to participate in driving out the Nazi occupiers. He tells us that it was understood for some time among himself and the friends he trusted to keep their dangerous knowledge confidential, that he would be the leader of their youth Resistance movement. Others would listen and observe to see what other individuals might join them, but of course, there were spies and each person they trusted could instead lead them to their own deaths. It was very dangerous.
And in such a circumstance, blindness became an unusual asset. New potential recruits would be led to their interview, but instead of an office or home, they were led through a labyrinth of boxes and crates in a completely unlit warehouse. Their interviewer waited at the end of this maze, and he interviewed them in the dark. He could detect falseness of character or fear of exposure from those who would betray the Resistance by listening to the nuances of their voices, and those individuals who weren't deemed worthy were left to find their own way back out. Of course, the location sometimes had to change, but the setup was the same.
Lusseyran's heroism is a testament to initiative and idealism. The reader will have to learn the rest of his story the way I did; the narrative is as skilled and engaging as the political work that preceded it. It is one of the most unusual and inspirational autobiographies I have encountered.
Highly recommended.
I have heard it suggested that those who lose one sense make up for it with the others, and so those whose eyes no longer see, or see nothing except shadow and light, hear, smell, touch and taste more acutely. Lusseyran claims that even as a child, he navigated his home town largely by smell; the baker was this way, and the creamery that way. And so the foundation was laid.
Though his education was challenged by instructors who were reluctant to have a blind student present, and who sometimes threw up nearly impossible requirements, such as reluctance to permit him the use of the braille typewriter his parents bought for him, yet others inspired him and moved him forward. Teachers, many of us at least, aspire to be someone like Jacques's history teacher. He describes this man's fire, and the bond that his passion for his subject and his vocation created:
"He wanted us to be exactly as we really were, funny if we couldn't help it, furious if we were angry...his learning made us gasp. He made numbers and facts pour down on us like hail...the syllabus for history stopped at 1918...but for him this was no obstacle, for he would go ahead without any syllabus. He went past all the barriers..."
The teacher would continue to teach at the end of the school day, excusing anyone who wanted to leave (and here I think of the yellow school buses that constrict the schedules of US public school students so often now). He says that everyone stayed. "Naturally."
The dynamic time in which he lived no doubt was responsible for much of their enthusiasm; history was clearly being created with each breath they took. Their history teacher told them--relying upon texts he had read in the original Russian--of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the Stalinism that had taken hold thereafter, of the purges. He spoke of the United States, Roosevelt, of initiative and imagination triumphant.
And so Lusseyran was not yet past adolescence when he felt he had a duty to change the world, to participate in driving out the Nazi occupiers. He tells us that it was understood for some time among himself and the friends he trusted to keep their dangerous knowledge confidential, that he would be the leader of their youth Resistance movement. Others would listen and observe to see what other individuals might join them, but of course, there were spies and each person they trusted could instead lead them to their own deaths. It was very dangerous.
And in such a circumstance, blindness became an unusual asset. New potential recruits would be led to their interview, but instead of an office or home, they were led through a labyrinth of boxes and crates in a completely unlit warehouse. Their interviewer waited at the end of this maze, and he interviewed them in the dark. He could detect falseness of character or fear of exposure from those who would betray the Resistance by listening to the nuances of their voices, and those individuals who weren't deemed worthy were left to find their own way back out. Of course, the location sometimes had to change, but the setup was the same.
Lusseyran's heroism is a testament to initiative and idealism. The reader will have to learn the rest of his story the way I did; the narrative is as skilled and engaging as the political work that preceded it. It is one of the most unusual and inspirational autobiographies I have encountered.
Highly recommended.
March 16, 2024
Magical. My only regret is that I didn’t read it with a highlighter in hand because this book was full of one-liners that I know I’ll want to revisit and savor. If I had to take the book to task, I would say that the action is slow to build, and for this reason I took my time in reading it. But even the “slow” chapters left me astonished. I feel inspired to be a better friend. The author had a unique gift for friendships.
February 17, 2015
I thought this book was about Jacques. A blind man who fought in the resistance during WW2. No. This book was about Jacques. A man who went blind when he was 8 years old but saw color (rainbows) and people everywhere he went. Nothing phased him. He knew everything instinctively. Everyone loved him. Everyone trusted him. Everyone always wanted him around. He was in charge of everything. He never lost hope or joy. Now, all of that is good except that I don't believe that a person could go through the Holocaust and never once lose hope or be downhearted.
This book read like a man pontificating only on his own amazing virtues. There are 16 chapters in this book. Jacques only starts talking about the resistance (that he started and ran apparently single-handedly at 16 years old) around chapter 10. He still doesn't say very much about the resistance just that he worked and had ideas (but he doesn't say what his ideas were) and vetted people and excelled at school the whole time. Chapter 14 he is taken to Buchenwald and then the book ends with their liberation in Chapter 16.
All in all, I would much rather read...Was God On Vacation? by Jack van der Geest.
This book read like a man pontificating only on his own amazing virtues. There are 16 chapters in this book. Jacques only starts talking about the resistance (that he started and ran apparently single-handedly at 16 years old) around chapter 10. He still doesn't say very much about the resistance just that he worked and had ideas (but he doesn't say what his ideas were) and vetted people and excelled at school the whole time. Chapter 14 he is taken to Buchenwald and then the book ends with their liberation in Chapter 16.
All in all, I would much rather read...Was God On Vacation? by Jack van der Geest.
December 13, 2009
This is one of those books that has the potential to be life-changing. Not only is Lusseyran just a small boy when he forms and leads one of the greatest underground resistance movements in France during WWII, he is blind. It is because of his blindness that he is so successful, he knows how to read people, to sense them and their intentions. He can "see" the light they give off, or radiate and it speaks to their character and their soul. Fascinating book about the beauty of childhood and unfortunately how we too-often squelch the honesty and purity that childhood can and should be. I learned so much about repentance through this book and it really helped me examine my relationship with my Savior. It was a little tough getting started, but so worth the plowing ahead. He does get send to Buchenwald, which I visited my senior year in high school, and his discoveries there are harrowing. Definitely one of my favorite books ever.
September 17, 2012
In his epilogue the author shares his purpose in writing this memoir -- "to show, if only in part, what these years held of life, light and joy by the grace of God." Following are some passages I noted, either for their impact or for purposes of better understanding terms and vocabulary. I should explain that at the age of eight the author was blinded in an accident, and found that still he could sense light, both inside him and outside him. The following notes describe how and when he lost that guiding light. I make note of this because I think it is also how we all become blind or at least crippled in a day to day sense.
p.20 "What the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.
"Anger and impatience had the same effect, throwing everything into confusion."...
"When I was playing with my small companions, if I suddenly grew anxious to win, to be first at all costs, then all at once I could see nothing....
"I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light. So is it surprising that I loved friendship and harmony when I was very young?"
p.24 "But we get nothing in this world without paying for it, and in return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don't even suspect. These were the gifts I received in such abundance."
p.25 "At first my hands refused to obey. When they looked for a glass on the table, they missed it. They fumbled around the door knobs, mixed up black and white keys at the piano, fluttered in the air as they came near things. It was almost as if they had been uprooted, cut off from me, and for a time this made me afraid.
"Fortunately, before long I realized that instead of becoming useless they were learning to be wise. They only needed time to accustom themselves to freedom. I had thought they were refusing to obey, but it was all because they were not getting orders, when the eyes were no longer there to command them."
p.31 "For a blind child there is a threat greater than all the wounds and bumps, the scratches and most of the blows, and that is the danger of isolation."
p.36 "The only way to be completely cured of blindness, and I mean socially, is never to treat it as a difference, a reason for separation, an infirmity, but to consider it a temporary impediment, a peculiarity of course, but one which will be overcome today or at the latest tomorrow. The cure is to immerse oneself again and without delay in a life that is as real and difficult as the lives of others. And that is what a special school, even the most generous and intelligent of them, does not allow."
p.49 "Living entirely turned in on oneself is like trying to play on a violin with slackened strings."
p.162 "Every day, including Sunday, I got up at half past four before it was light. The first thing I did was to kneel down and pray: 'My God, give me the strength to keep my promises. Since I made them in a good cause, they are yours to keep as well as mine. Now that twenty young men--tomorrow there may be a hundred--are waiting for my orders, tell me what orders to give them. By myself I know how to do almost nothing, but if you will it I am capable of almost everything. Most of all give me prudence. Your enthusiasm I no longer need, for I am filled with it.'"
p.185 maladroit: unskillful; awkward; bungling; tactless (Dictionary.com) "The distribution of the bulletin meant trips to apartment houses in Paris, copies slipped under doors, one boy on our team watching the exits to the building while the others flew from one floor to the next with their shoes in their hands. Traitors were coming closer. Nothing was to be gained by deluding ourselves. It was not the professionals we were afraid of. We knew they were not common and almost always maladroit. But there were still the unintentional ones, and they were the devil. Just try defending youself against people who are crazed by fear."
p.212 "The only belief shared by all the members of Defense de la France was the survival of Christian values."
p.228 fascism / fascist -- a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition (Merriam-Webster.com) The Vichy decree was "fascist to the core".
p.232 "A society was being developed in which moral and spiritual factors would finally be given their due, as the waste products of a dead civilization."
p.235 adroit: Clever or skillful in using the hands or mind. (google) "It is true that Jean in those days was more and more intelligent, but he was also less and less adroit."
p.245 "But to experience this pity you do not need an act of faith. You don't even need to have been brought up in an organized church. From the moment when you start looking for this pity, you lay hold of it. It lives in the fact that you breathe and have blood pulsing in your temples. If you pay strict attention, the divine pity grows and enfolds you. You are no longer the same person, believe me. And you can say to the Lord: 'Thy will be done.' This you can say, and saying it can do you nothing but good.
"There is forgiveness for every misery. And as misery grows, forgiveness grows along with it."
p.278 aphasic: Partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease. (freedictionary.com)
ataxic: Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement. [Greek ataxi , disorder : a-, not; see a-1 + taxis, order.] a·tax ic adj. (freedictionary.com)
scrofulous: 1. Literally, relating to scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, particularly of the neck). 2. Figuratively, morally contaminated and ... (medterms.com)
p.279 pleurisy: inflammation of the lining of the lungs and chest (the pleura) that leads to chest pain (usually sharp) when you take a breath or cough. Symptoms: The main symptom of pleurisy is pain in the chest. (ncbi.nim.nih.gov)
erysipelas: a type of skin infection (cellulitis). Symptoms: Blisters; Fever, shaking, and chills; Painful, very red, swollen, and warm skin underneath the sore (ncbi.nim.nih.gov)
p.279 Buchenwald: Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war— worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories.[1] From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2. (Wikipedia) Although Buchenwald was technically not an extermination camp, it was a site of an extraordinary number of deaths.
A primary cause of death was illness due to harsh camp conditions, with starvation—and its consequent illnesses—prevalent. Malnourished and suffering from disease, many were literally "worked to death" under the Vernichtung durch Arbeit policy (extermination through labor), as inmates had only the choice between slave labour or inevitable execution. Many inmates died as a result of human experimentation or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards. Other prisoners were simply murdered, primarily by shooting and hanging. (Wikipedia) According to the same source, the total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545.[24] This number is the sum of:
Deaths according to material left behind by SS: 33,462[25]
Executions by shooting: 8,483
Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
Deaths during evacuation transports: 13,500[26]
This total (56,545) corresponds to a death rate of 24 percent assuming that the number of persons passing through the camp according to documents left by the SS, 240,000 prisoners, is accurate.[27] (Wikipedia)
The author of this book survived this camp.
p.20 "What the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.
"Anger and impatience had the same effect, throwing everything into confusion."...
"When I was playing with my small companions, if I suddenly grew anxious to win, to be first at all costs, then all at once I could see nothing....
"I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light. So is it surprising that I loved friendship and harmony when I was very young?"
p.24 "But we get nothing in this world without paying for it, and in return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don't even suspect. These were the gifts I received in such abundance."
p.25 "At first my hands refused to obey. When they looked for a glass on the table, they missed it. They fumbled around the door knobs, mixed up black and white keys at the piano, fluttered in the air as they came near things. It was almost as if they had been uprooted, cut off from me, and for a time this made me afraid.
"Fortunately, before long I realized that instead of becoming useless they were learning to be wise. They only needed time to accustom themselves to freedom. I had thought they were refusing to obey, but it was all because they were not getting orders, when the eyes were no longer there to command them."
p.31 "For a blind child there is a threat greater than all the wounds and bumps, the scratches and most of the blows, and that is the danger of isolation."
p.36 "The only way to be completely cured of blindness, and I mean socially, is never to treat it as a difference, a reason for separation, an infirmity, but to consider it a temporary impediment, a peculiarity of course, but one which will be overcome today or at the latest tomorrow. The cure is to immerse oneself again and without delay in a life that is as real and difficult as the lives of others. And that is what a special school, even the most generous and intelligent of them, does not allow."
p.49 "Living entirely turned in on oneself is like trying to play on a violin with slackened strings."
p.162 "Every day, including Sunday, I got up at half past four before it was light. The first thing I did was to kneel down and pray: 'My God, give me the strength to keep my promises. Since I made them in a good cause, they are yours to keep as well as mine. Now that twenty young men--tomorrow there may be a hundred--are waiting for my orders, tell me what orders to give them. By myself I know how to do almost nothing, but if you will it I am capable of almost everything. Most of all give me prudence. Your enthusiasm I no longer need, for I am filled with it.'"
p.185 maladroit: unskillful; awkward; bungling; tactless (Dictionary.com) "The distribution of the bulletin meant trips to apartment houses in Paris, copies slipped under doors, one boy on our team watching the exits to the building while the others flew from one floor to the next with their shoes in their hands. Traitors were coming closer. Nothing was to be gained by deluding ourselves. It was not the professionals we were afraid of. We knew they were not common and almost always maladroit. But there were still the unintentional ones, and they were the devil. Just try defending youself against people who are crazed by fear."
p.212 "The only belief shared by all the members of Defense de la France was the survival of Christian values."
p.228 fascism / fascist -- a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition (Merriam-Webster.com) The Vichy decree was "fascist to the core".
p.232 "A society was being developed in which moral and spiritual factors would finally be given their due, as the waste products of a dead civilization."
p.235 adroit: Clever or skillful in using the hands or mind. (google) "It is true that Jean in those days was more and more intelligent, but he was also less and less adroit."
p.245 "But to experience this pity you do not need an act of faith. You don't even need to have been brought up in an organized church. From the moment when you start looking for this pity, you lay hold of it. It lives in the fact that you breathe and have blood pulsing in your temples. If you pay strict attention, the divine pity grows and enfolds you. You are no longer the same person, believe me. And you can say to the Lord: 'Thy will be done.' This you can say, and saying it can do you nothing but good.
"There is forgiveness for every misery. And as misery grows, forgiveness grows along with it."
p.278 aphasic: Partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease. (freedictionary.com)
ataxic: Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement. [Greek ataxi , disorder : a-, not; see a-1 + taxis, order.] a·tax ic adj. (freedictionary.com)
scrofulous: 1. Literally, relating to scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, particularly of the neck). 2. Figuratively, morally contaminated and ... (medterms.com)
p.279 pleurisy: inflammation of the lining of the lungs and chest (the pleura) that leads to chest pain (usually sharp) when you take a breath or cough. Symptoms: The main symptom of pleurisy is pain in the chest. (ncbi.nim.nih.gov)
erysipelas: a type of skin infection (cellulitis). Symptoms: Blisters; Fever, shaking, and chills; Painful, very red, swollen, and warm skin underneath the sore (ncbi.nim.nih.gov)
p.279 Buchenwald: Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war— worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories.[1] From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2. (Wikipedia) Although Buchenwald was technically not an extermination camp, it was a site of an extraordinary number of deaths.
A primary cause of death was illness due to harsh camp conditions, with starvation—and its consequent illnesses—prevalent. Malnourished and suffering from disease, many were literally "worked to death" under the Vernichtung durch Arbeit policy (extermination through labor), as inmates had only the choice between slave labour or inevitable execution. Many inmates died as a result of human experimentation or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards. Other prisoners were simply murdered, primarily by shooting and hanging. (Wikipedia) According to the same source, the total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545.[24] This number is the sum of:
Deaths according to material left behind by SS: 33,462[25]
Executions by shooting: 8,483
Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
Deaths during evacuation transports: 13,500[26]
This total (56,545) corresponds to a death rate of 24 percent assuming that the number of persons passing through the camp according to documents left by the SS, 240,000 prisoners, is accurate.[27] (Wikipedia)
The author of this book survived this camp.
May 24, 2018
I don't generally like nonfiction, but a friend lent this to me and, besides just being a good person and wanting to read the books my friends recommend haha, I also need a book lent to me by someone for the PopSugar challenge, so there you have it. I don't doubt that if I liked nonfiction, this would have been a 4 or 5 star book, but even so, I really liked how beautiful the writing was and the ability Lusseyran had to just suck the reader into the pages with his style. The plot was, of course, an interesting one, a blind man standing up to evil forces in WW2. Just as inspiring as it sounds. Although, it was kind of anticlimactic at the end to see that (this isn't really a spoiler as it's in the author's bio on the back, but I'll put it in the spoiler just to be safe) after all he had been through and survived, he died in a car crash in the 70s. I don't know why that bothered me so much, but it did. I know this is nonfiction and you can't control what happens, but it was still disappointing . Overall, it was pretty good. For me, it doesn't beat Gifted Hands, but that's just because Gifted Hands is more relatable (for me at least), but it's definitely better than a lot of other memoirs floating around out there.
December 24, 2020
Amazing. Best book of the year and in my top books of all time. Don’t let the cheesy title fool you, this book is magic. While reading, I thought if I was not the one disadvantaged by not being blind? He learns to harness joy and light through his difficulties of being blind and through the concentration camps. He has made me reconsider my usage of senses, ability to read situations and people, and the quest for light. So much to say and so futile to describe. Ten out of ten, twenty out of twenty.
December 12, 2023
J’ai pleuré, je l’ai lu en deux jours, je l’ai adoré
C’est tout ce que j’ai à dire sur ce livre
La première partie est un peu longue mais le reste en vaut tellement la peine
C’est tout ce que j’ai à dire sur ce livre
La première partie est un peu longue mais le reste en vaut tellement la peine
January 17, 2025
Wunderschön geschriebene Autobiographie eines beeindruckenden Menschen. Lusseryan beschreibt so eindrücklich, wie er seine Umgebung als Blinder wahrnimmt - trotzdem wie Licht!
March 20, 2019
This book was good, but hard to get into.
It was heart wrenching to hear about all the friends seen & lost over his time at the concentration camp. The way he describes everything is fascinating & sometimes felt like too much, but the way he helped spread joy is inspiring. Reading about him and his first 20 years of life was amazing.
It was heart wrenching to hear about all the friends seen & lost over his time at the concentration camp. The way he describes everything is fascinating & sometimes felt like too much, but the way he helped spread joy is inspiring. Reading about him and his first 20 years of life was amazing.
March 5, 2022
This book was not at all what I was expecting! It was not only a gripping Holocaust tale; it was a philosophy of life, of love, of war, of death, of hope and beauty. I listened to the audio book, but I've already put it on my list to revisit it in written form. It seemed that every other line held an idea that I want to stop and ponder.
December 28, 2012
What an amazing book. This is every bit as inspiring and significant as Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. I truly believe in the force of light as described in this book. I have felt the present of objects around me as the author describes. I do know that joy come from searching for the light which then becomes you or which as he states is already a part of you. I know that there is light within you that recognizes the light of others. I have felt it. It is the basis of the power of discernment. I know that there is freedom associated with this light that is lasting and very powerful. I have learned much from this man's experiences and recommend the reading of this book to all.
This reminds me of the poem
UNCONQUERABLE
by: William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
This a more militant view but the indomitability of the human soul is something we all need to understand.
While both of the gentlemen seem not to have believed in God, each one does acknowledge the inner light and the soul. The problem most have with the inhumanity of man if that they do not understand that the Lord will not abridge man's free agency. When one understands the principle of free agency, it becomes obvious that each person is responsible for their part in communal decisions and that to not resist evil is to become part of the forward movement of it. The men and women in France certainly understood this principle as we all should. The killing fields in Cambodia could not have happened if the people had not ignored the signs of impending disaster and their part in letting it happen. The scriptures tell us again and again that we must heed their warnings or suffer the consequences.
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