Paris-Underground (1943)
"Yet Men Still Risked Their Lives to Get Out of German-Held Territory Nightly"
Shiber, Etta. Paris-Underground. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943.
Octavo. Hardcover. 1st Edition.
First edition of this powerful memoir about Etta Shiber, an American who, along with a close friend, became a member of the resistance transporting scores of British soldiers out of Occupied France before her eventual capture by the Gestapo, remand to a Nazi prison, and deportation to America in a prisoner swap. The widow of a newspaper man, Etta Shiber found herself living a quiet life in occupied France with a close friend, Kitty Beaurepos, after failing to escape the country. By chance, she became involved in a plot to get a British pilot out of occupied territory. Eventually folded into the French Resistance along with Kitty, Shiber helped dozens of Englishmen make the perilous journey out of France through a combination of intuition and bravery. Shiber and Kitty eventually attracted the notice of the Gestapo and both were arrested. Standing proud and seemingly fearless before the judges, Shiber refused to give in to Nazi terror. She managed to avoid informing on her co-conspirators and accepted her sentence. Kitty was sentenced to death, while Shiber managed to escape Germany in an exchange for a spy. This memoir tells the story of these real-life adventures and the horrors that resulted. Book fine, dust jacket extremely good with a few closed tears, a few shallow chips, and toning to spine.