She planned her work in five volumes, Némirovsky only completed two, but the circumstances of the interrupted work — the author's arrest, deportation, and death from typhus in Auschwitz in July 1942, helps the reader to have a more understanding of how the novel plays out.
An only child, Irène Némirovsky was born into a world of precarious privilege.
Her father, Léon, along with her future father-in-law, Efime Epstein, belonged to an elite of Russian Jews, centered in Kiev. Wealth and imperial favor had enabled them to escape the nightmare of pogroms, only to find that their protected status made them enemies of the Revolution.
In 1917, when Irène was 14, she and her family fled for their lives — first, to the remote countryside of Finland, then to Sweden. In 1919, they arrived in Paris quite poor. Léon returned to banking and, helped by the boom years of the 1920s, he rose straight to the top once again.
http://www.nysun.com/arts/laffaire-nmirovsky/57373/
She started writing when she was 18 years old.
In 1926, Irène Némirovsky married Michel Epstein, a banker, and had two daughters: Denise, born in 1929; and Élisabeth, in 1937.
Irène Némirovsky was jewish, but converted to Catholicism in 1939 and wrote in Candide and Gringoire, two anti-Semitic magazines—probably to hide the family's Jewish origins and protect their children from growing anti-Semitic persecution.
Upon the Nazis' approach to Paris, they fled with their two daughters to the village of Issy-l'Evêque.
where Némirovsky was required to wear the yellow star.
On July 13, 1942, Irène Némirovsky (then 39) was arrested as a "stateless person of Jewish descent" by French police under the regulations of the German occupation. As she was being taken away, she told her daughters, "I am going on a journey now." She was brought to a convoy assembly camp and on July 17 together with 928 other Jewish deportees transported to Auschwitz.
Upon her arrival there two days later, her forearm was marked with an identification number. According to official papers at the time, she died a month later of typhus. Other records revealed that Irène was actually gassed there by the Nazis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ir%C3%A8ne_N%C3%A9mirovsky
1 comment:
I recently saw your post about reading Irène Némirovsky. I wanted to pass along some information on an exciting exhibition about Némirovsky's life, work, and legacy at the Museum of Jewish Heritage —A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City. Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française, which will run through August 2009, includes powerful rare artifacts —including the valise in which the original manuscript for Suite Française was found, as well as many personal papers and family photos. The majority of these documents and artifacts have never been outside of France. For fans of her work, this exhibition is an opportunity to really “get to know” Irene. And for those who can’t visit, there is a special website devoted to her story www.mjhnyc.org/irene.
The Museum will host several public programs over the course of the exhibition’s run that will put Némirovsky’s work and life into historical and literary context. Book clubs and groups are invited to the Museum for tours and discussions in the exhibition’s adjacent Salon (by appointment).
It is the Museum’s hope that the exhibit will engage visitors and promote dialogue about this extraordinary writer and the complex time in which she lived and died. To book a group tour, please contact Chris Lopez at 646.437.4304 or clopez@mjhnyc.org.
Please visit our website at www.mjhnyc.org for up-to-date information about upcoming public programs or to join our e-bulletin list. Thanks for sharing this info with your readers. If you need any more, please do not hesitate to contact me at hfurst@mjhnyc.org
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