War on the Margins

Libby Cone

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Lovereading Price £12.99

RRP: £12.99

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Why I wrote this book

I wrote this book because I had been unaware of any German occupation of British soil, and of the Holocaust-in-microcosm that ensued. The self-identified members of the Jewish community had evacuated the island just before the Germans arrived, so the people who were left did not even think of themselves as Jews for the most part.

The local government officials, especially the Chief Aliens Officer of Jersey, Clifford Orange, were so overzealous in following Nazi racial doctrine that people with only two Jewish grandparents, and not the three or more stipulated by the Nazis, were forced to register. Not everyone can fathom the persecution of millions of people at the same time; this glimpse into the oppression of a handful of people may make the Holocaust more understandable to these readers. The Islands were also the site of many slave labor camps, as Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and other foreign nationals were worked by the Halliburton of the time, Organisation Todt, to fortify the Islands in anticipation of the conquest of England.

Two heroes of the Resistance on Jersey were the Jewish Surrealist artists and lovers Lucille Schwob (aka Claude Cahun) and Suzanne Malherbe (aka Marcel Moore), who distributed propaganda to the German soldiers urging them to mutiny, and who eventually wound up in military prison, where they almost starved to death. Their bravery has gone unnoticed by most WWII historians. By including them in my novel, I hope to remedy that omission.

Synopsis

France has fallen to the Nazis. Britain is under siege. As BBC bulletins grow bleak, residents of Jersey abandon their homes in their thousands. When the Germans take over, Marlene Zimmer, a shy clerk at the Aliens Office, must register her friends and neighbours as Jews while concealing her own heritage, until eventually she is forced to flee. Layers of extraordinary history unfold as we chart Marlene's transformation from unassuming office worker to active Resistance member under the protection of artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who manage to find poetry in the midst of hardship and unimaginable danger. Drawn from authentic World War II documents, broadcasts and private letters, 'War on the Margins' tells the unforgettable story of the deepening horror of the Nazi regime in Jersey and the extraordinary bravery of those who sought to subvert it.

Reviews

‘Libby capably and confidently weaves a pitch-perfect novel out of the facts surrounding the oppression ... gripping, heart-rending reading ’
— Dovegreyreader

‘Seventy years after we declared war on Germany, it is worth remembering that, while mainland Britain struggled to keep at bay the threat of Nazi invasion, the people of the Channel Islands knew just what such an invasion could mean... What makes this story so compelling is the way in which original documents and papers are interspersed, highlighting the gradual erosion and ultimate destruction of the rights of the Jewish islanders. A very timely book indeed’
— Daily Mail

‘There are many eye-opening aspects of the story: the progressive deterioriation of the islanders’ diets as supplies become scarce (you will never look at a swede in the same way again); the shocking conditions in the Organization Todt work camps, with the terrible irony that men were worked to death to build hospitals for German soldiers; the decline in German morale after D-Day and the pitiful state that islanders and occupiers alike were reduced to after the link to the French mainland was cut. Cone tells her tale with understated empathy and never loses sight of the human dimensions (on all sides of the conflict). War in the Margins will ultimately leave you asking yourself one question: how would you have acted if it had been you? An excellently researched and still very affecting read ’
— bookgeeks.co.uk

 

It is said that evil prevails when good men do nothing. For good men, also read good women, for in Libby Cone’s novel of wartime Jersey, War on the Margins (Duckworth, £12.99), it’s the covert petticoat brigade who most rile the occupying Nazis. Starting life as Cone’s strictly academic MA thesis, this blossomed into a hardback gem of Jewish resistance, chilling, charming and interspersed with authentic papers and broadcasts of the time. Here is Jersey not as millionaire tax haven, but characterised by labour camps, informers, precious parsnip tea and a swastika flying over Fort Regent. Plain, single, nervy Marlene Zimmer is the improbable heroine, a very ordinary clerk at the island’s aliens office. She keeps herself — and her late father’s ethnicity — to herself, though German orders oblige her to register others — friends and neighbours among them — as Jews. Marlene may have no idea what her inherited kiddush cup betokens, but Jersey’s fate stirs her latent semitism. Fear forces her undercover, but outrage draws her close to other partisans, from whom she learns to dare, to share a lone root vegetable, to love and to be her bravest self. “Suzanne” and “Lucille” are two bewigged bohemians who bring the best out of Marlene — and high praise to Libby Cone for exquisitely enshrining their genuine wartime contribution. In real Channel Island history, they were Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Jewish lesbian lovers and artists who together defied the Germans, chalking on walls Churchill’s ubiquitous V for victory. Their tireless propaganda prompted soldiers to desert, so landing the colourful pair in Nazi cells, under sentence of death. Libby Cone breathes life into the poetic exploits of these “surrealist sisters” and into the transformation of Marlene — a victory V in itself.

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