Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce

Left Bank Books is delighted to welcome Professor Betty-Becker Theye to a booksigning and talk on Friday evening, July 30th at 7:00 pm at the bookshop in Searsport. Professor Becker-Theye is the translator of The Hidden Children of France 1940-1945: Stories of Survival, edited by Danielle Bailly and originally published in France. The event is free of charge, and the public is warmly invited. The Hidden Children of France documents the stolen childhoods of eighteen young Holocaust survivors who figure among the last witnesses of the Nazi era. Bailly herself was one of the surviving "hidden children" whose stories are included in this collection. The eighteen former hidden children describe their lives before, during and after the war, recounting their incredible journeys and expressing their deepest gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to help and save others. Although the history of France's hidden children is little known to American readers, French citizens saved six out of seven Jewish children and three-fourths of the Jewish adult population from deportation during the Nazi occupation. Bailly's book helps shed light on this fascinating and poignant chapter of World War II history. Besides a discussion of the book and its narrators, Becker-Theye will also comment on the challenge of translation of a work such as this into English. Excerpts from the book will be read aloud by young readers from the community. Danielle Bailly was Professor of Linguistics at Paris Diderot University until 1998. Betty Becker-Theye is Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Humanities at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Adjunct Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Maine Hutchinson Center. She is the author of The Seducer as Mythic Figure in Richardson, Laclos, and Kierkegaard. For more information, or to reserve a book for the event, please call Left Bank Books at 548-6400.