Two Sisters

November 1, 2024
When Whitehouse (The People on the Beach, 2020) discovered that a stranger saved the lives of two of her in-laws, Marion and Huguette, during the Holocaust, she decided to find the family of the now-deceased man to learn more about him, uncover his reasons for risking his life to save her relatives, and properly honor his actions. Whitehouse relates Marion and Huguette's lives in Germany and France as everything changed with the rise of the Nazis, and they had to flee and hide their Jewish identity to survive. Marion became an operative in the French Resistance, which led Whitehouse to look at Resistance operations in Vichy France. Huguette encountered more danger when her mother was captured and deported to Auschwitz. In the present day, Whitehouse searches archives, conducts interviews, and visits historical sites for clues to fill in Marion and Huguette's story. While researching, she muses on the importance and character of memory, accountability, and the complicity of the French government in the Holocaust. A compelling account of survival and remembrance.

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November 25, 2024
Journalist Whitehouse (The People on the Beach) delivers a heartrending account of her mother-in-law’s experiences during the Holocaust. Huguette Müller and her sister, Marion, escaped the Nazis with the help of a French doctor named Frédéric Pétri in 1943. To flesh out that story beyond Huguette’s memory of it, Whitehouse tracked down the doctor’s relatives in California, conducted interviews, and combed through historical records in hopes of adding Dr. Pétri to the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. Interwoven with the details of Whitehouse’s reporting is a portrait of the white-collar Müller family, professionals who distanced themselves from their Judaism in 1920s and ’30s Berlin. When the Nazis came to power, the Müllers fled to France, where Huguette and Marion’s mother was captured and sent to Auschwitz. The sisters escaped to a ski resort in the French Alps, where Huguette broke her leg and was treated by Dr. Pétri, who took her into his home so they could avoid detection by the Gestapo at a local hospital, and eventually helped them leave France. Whitehouse nimbly balances a white-knuckle wartime narrative with a trenchant examination of the politics of Vichy France. This makes a well-covered historical period feel agonizingly immediate. Photos.