La Peau et les Os

by Georges Hyvernaud

A professor of literature at the école normale in Arras, Georges Hyvernaud was called up at the start of World War II and given the rank of lieutenant. He was captured with his unit in 1940. He was impounded in one Pomeranian oflag, then in another; finally, on January 20, 1945, he was released and together with other former prisoners made his way across northern Germany, on foot and in cattle cars. On his person, Hyvernaud carried notebooks filled with what shortly became La Peau et les Os, a narrative of his wartime experience.


Hyvernaud's account is of a failure of character, the failure of an entire order, of what he had taken to be a world. No talk of la France éternelle. No gloire. It was meanness, selfishness, cowardice, anguish, and despair; above all it was "the irremediable absurdity of everything. You detach yourself. You pull away from the tragedy. Nothing surprises or horrifies you any longer. Men die; it's simple; it's the way things are."


Hyvernaud never renounced, never recovered from his hatred of what history, the war, "the way things are" had done to him. His experience as a captive marked him forever.

Genres: History

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Lolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le témoignage d'un prisonnier de la 2e guerre mondiale qui a passé plusieurs années dans la misère des camps de prisonniers allemands. Un récit sans concession, brut, froid et désabusé. Le narrateur a échappé à la mort, aux camps de concentration, à la gloire de la résistance aussi ; il est un oublié de l'Histoire, bien que sa souffrance et la blessure de ces années de captivité et d'humiliation soient palpables.

[Karine Martel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mon état d’esprit ne devait pas y être, j’ai eu de la difficulté à avancer ma lecture. Peut-être ai-je lui déjà trop d’écrits sur le sujet. Je ne recommanderai pas. Il y a mieux à lire sur cette seconde guerre.

[Aude · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le témoignage poignant d’un survivant des atrocités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.