by Penny Reeder
Imagine living in France during the 1930s. Imagine yourself as a high school student studying German, tuning across the radio dial and finding a live broadcast of Adolph Hitler, spewing forth an invective of hatred, vilifying enemies of the Reich, exhorting fellow Germans to recapture hegemony and to rid themselves and all of Europe of all their enemies. How chilling it would be to hear these rantings and the crowd's enthusiastic approving responses in real time. How frightening then to witness the surge of Hitler's armies, trampling on the civilization and heritage of one European people after another. How desperate it must have felt to furtively tune one's radio to the forbidden BBC broadcast of the fragmentary French government in exile, to understand that one's activities in opposition could lead to betrayal and capture at any moment. How desolate it must have felt to travel for days and nights, without heat, or water, or hope, in a cattle car packed with human beings destined for starvation, torture, forced labor, and death; and then to lose one's friends, one after another, while barely hanging onto life or hope during the long, tortured years of war.
I was taken to those times and those places as I read the words of Jacques Lusseyran, who refused to be indoctrinated or intimidated into silent acquiescence. I felt the chill he felt, experienced his premonitions of suffering, and as a reader of his personal account, was transported by his words which recalled the memories of one of the youngest members of the French Resistance. Lusseyran, at 16, led a movement of young French men and women who wrote, published, and distributed the underground newspapers which let ordinary men and women know what was happening in their occupied country and in the rest of the world; the papers contradicted the lies which were spread by the occupying powers, and these truths paved the way for the return of France's true patriots, the defeat of the Axis, and the triumph of a free France and, ultimately, a free world.
Information is power. Even a young boy of 16 knew it, and despite his youth, and a disability which prevented him from reading even a single printed word in the newspapers he and his compatriots published, despite a fear of dire consequences, and a premonition of the same, Jacques Lusseyran accepted the challenge of recruiting others to the resistance movement and of telling the truth about the Nazis in newspapers which at one point in those early years of French occupation were openly distributed by his courageous friends at the doors to cathedrals and on the cars of the Paris Metro.
Lusseyran and his friends paid dearly for their courage and their refusal to suffer the occupiers' invasion in silence. Lusseyran was one of the very few who survived, but his suffering was great. Nearly all his idealistic friends were killed, and he emerged, against all odds, from Buchenwald, where he endured most of the war years, with scarred body and spirit. You can read his story, conveyed in his own words, written to honor the memory of all who suffered and died, and to renew our faith in the courage of men and women who refuse to surrender to hatred or tyranny or malevolence, who believed in the light of truth and bravery and the triumph of the divine, in the pages of his biography, "And There Was Light," published by Parabola Books, and available on audiocassette from the same publisher.
Although many readers may be intrigued by Lusseyran's descriptions of how he became blind at the age of eight, how he and his family adapted to his disability, and the concept of a young man with a severe disability leading a movement of hundreds of able-bodied French citizens in their struggle against tyranny, it was not Lusseyran's descriptions of blindness or how he coped with a lack of sight that intrigued me. Rather, it was his descriptions of his commitment to truth, and to humanity, and to survival of the human spirit that kept me reading this book and continue to inspire me, on virtually a daily basis, weeks after I turned off my cassette player as the third tape came to an end.
We live in troubled times. Wouldn't it be easy to just separate ourselves from screaming headlines, fluctuating levels of terror, and hard questions about the rights of minorities, the advisability of going to war, the consequences of "more guns and less butter"? Why bother to vote in an election whose outcome seems pre-ordained by powers outside our control? With wars and rumors of wars, an uncertain economy, and real worries about which among us might be friend or foe, a person could be tempted into silent acquiescence when confronted by threats of retribution, or worse. Why bother to stand up for what is right in a corporation, or a community, or a nation or a world when what is right is called "wrong" by some of the people in charge?
Let Jacques Lusseyran remind all of us of the importance of standing up for truth, and morality, and the worthiness of human beings and democratic values. At this time of Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for heroes, like Jacques Lusseyran, who summoned the courage to fight against tyranny, and whose stories reaffirm for each of us who know about them, the value of staying involved in life even when the challenges seem insurmountable.
I thank the publishers of Lusseyran's memoir for sharing the audio version of his story with "The Braille Forum," and, without reservation, I recommend this excellent autobiography to every American, sighted and blind, as we confront our own daily struggles against fear, hopelessness, intolerance, or tyranny.
Order "And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance," which is available in print and on (two-track) audiotape at www.parabola.org/books/Lusseyran/light.html.