Dr. Jeffrey Jackson’s new book project, The Soldiers With No Names: Two Women Who Fought the Nazis for Life, Love, and Art, tells the story of Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute hundreds of notes, songs, poems, and drawings designed for resistance against Nazi repression. According to a recent article on Ozy.com, the women also cross-dressed, which was illegal in France in the 1930s. “As lesbians, as French women living in exile, there are lots of things to suggest they should keep their heads down. But instead they stick their necks out,” says Jackson in the article.
The story takes readers inside the day-to-day struggles of civilians surviving in occupied territory and facing tough, sometimes gut-wrenching, choices. Jackson is the J.J. McComb Professor of History at Rhodes. His courses often include the comparative history of Fascism and Nazism, Europe since 1945 and the history of Paris and of France.