The Children of Freedom
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 1:40 pm. 0 comments
The Children of Freedom, Marc Levy. (Harper, 2008)
Rating: 
Children of Freedom is a compelling story that must be told. It is a tale of how children lost their youth to resist the occupation of France and, branded terrorists, fought for a cause they believed in. If you are the occupier then such partisans are undermining the forces of law and order; if you are the occupied and have imposed on you a law and an order you do not believe is just then you are the heroes of a just cause. How complicated this political morality is and how difficult to find ourselves once of the side of the occupied now on the side of occupier, still believing our cause is just. Guantanomo Bay, Abu Ghraib: these acts let us down. Still they are nothing compared to the misery and suffering that was inflicted on continental Europe in the middle of the last century.
This story touches on the extent of the suffering, mind boggling numbers of the dead, the displaced, the tortured, the damaged, but narrows the story in order to deepen it to the story of one partisan brigade operating in Toulouse. It follows the thread of two brothers’ lives as they feel compelled to resist, as they face torture and imprisonment, and onwards to their final journey towards Dachau. It is almost inconceivable that man can inflict such degredation and pain upon another man, for whatever cause; and yet the suffering that human beings are able to endure is quite remarkable.
If all this seems a bit depressing, then strangely it’s not. This is a story about hope and resilience as well. We must face the horror in our histories to guide us in treading more carefully in future, we should hold onto the testimonies of courage, hope and the small acts of human kindness, in the face of fear, to remind ourselves of all that is good in human nature, and how this can endure even when confronted with hardship and evil. Our current ‘crisis’ is nothing of the sort compared to the gnawing of hunger at a truly emaciated body, or the gnawing of lost families, love and freedom at the soul.
Yet we survive, we carry on and we try and make the next chapter of our story that bit better for the generations that succeed us. This is the message of hope, this is what people fight for.
In the early stages Marc Levy nearly fails to do justice to his material. He initially didn’t strike me as as storyteller who could match his story. In places in the first part, Levy struggles to find the right tone in attempting to tie his story between the factual waypoints and so he veers between tedious documentary, that risks deadening the reality, and cross cutting between scenes that almost has too much of an eye on the cinematic. However, as the book proceeds Levy grows more adept at how to tell his tale, and throughout the later parts he begins to find words that really pierce the imagination and touch the emotion. The third and final part is truly gripping as the prisoners search for the slimmest chance of survival as they hurtle towards death and destruction. This book will leave you humbled.
