Dora Bruder is a biography, an autobiography and a detective novel by French writer Patrick Modiano about a Jewish teenage girl who went missing during the German occupation of Paris. It was first published in French on 2 April 1997 and published in English in December 1999. [1]
The book is also entitled The Search Warrant for the British edition of the translation. [2]
The book starts when the author comes across a missing person ad in the Paris Soir newspaper on 31 December 1941 looking for Dora Bruder. She is a 15-year-old Jewish girl. Mondiano starts his investigations based on public records and conversations with Dora's family members. She was born in the 12th arrondissement and lives in 18th arrondissement of Paris. Her parents sent her to a catholic school in December 1941 from which she ran away. She was later found in April 1942 but her father, a Jew of Austrian background, had been arrested and sent to the internment camp of Drancy where she will also end up. Dora and her father will eventually be deported to Auschwitz on 18 September 1942.
Dora Bruder is a typical example of the themes found across Modiano's work such as memory, loss, recovery, time. [3] [4] [5]
The German occupation of Paris and the status of the Jews in Paris during this time is also a central theme of Modiano's work since his first novel. [6] [7]
Across the story, Mondiano adds his personal experiences with his father through Dora's interactions with her family, his life in the same neighbourhood or his escape from school when he was 14. [8] [9]
Drancy internment camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban community under the name La Cité de la Muette, it was located in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of Paris, France.
Picpus Cemetery is the largest private cemetery in Paris, France, located in the 12th arrondissement. It was created from land seized from the convent of the Chanoinesses de St-Augustin, during the French Revolution. Just minutes away from where the guillotine was set up, it contains 1,306 victims executed between 14 June and 27 July 1794, during the height and last phase of the Reign of Terror. Today only descendants of those 1,306 victims are eligible to be buried at Picpus Cemetery.
Louise Béatrice Reinach was a French socialite and a Holocaust victim.
Emmanuel Berl was a French journalist, historian and essayist. He was born at Le Vésinet in the modern département of Yvelines, and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris. In 1937 he married the singer, composer and film actress Mireille Hartuch; she had nicknamed him "Théodore". Berl was the cousin of Lisette de Brinon.
Jean Patrick Modiano, generally known as Patrick Modiano, is a French novelist and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a noted writer of autofiction, the blend of autobiography and historical fiction.
Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy, born Jacques-Charles Dufresnoy, better known by her stage name Coccinelle, was a French actress, entertainer and singer. She was transgender, and was the first widely publicized post-war gender reassignment case in Europe, where she was an international celebrity and a renowned club singer.
Dora Philippine Kallmus, also known as Madame D'Ora or Madame d'Ora, was an Austrian fashion and portrait photographer.
Hélène Berr was a French woman of Jewish ancestry and faith, who documented her life in a diary during the time of Nazi occupation of France. In France she is considered to be a "French Anne Frank".
Henri Lafont was a French criminal based in Paris who headed the French Gestapo during the Nazi German occupation in World War II.
The Carlingue were French auxiliaries who worked for the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst and Geheime Feldpolizei during the German occupation of France in the Second World War.
Missing Person is the sixth novel by French writer Patrick Modiano, published on 5 September 1978. In the same year it was awarded the Prix Goncourt. The English translation by Daniel Weissbort was published in 1980. Rue des Boutiques Obscures is the name of a street in Rome where one of the characters lived, and where Modiano himself lived for some time.
The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation is an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future generations. After the Liberation, the center was moved to Paris in 1944 where it remains today.
The authorities of medieval Paris attempted to confine prostitution to a particular district. Louis IX (1226–1270) designated nine streets in the Beaubourg Quartier where it would be permitted. In the early part of the 19th century, state-controlled legal brothels started to appear in several French cities. By law, they had to be run by a woman and their external appearance had to be discreet. The maisons were required to light a red lantern when they were open (from which is derived the term red-light district and the prostitutes were only permitted to leave the maisons on certain days and only if accompanied by its head. By 1810, Paris alone had 180 officially approved brothels.
Léon Zadoc-Kahn was a French doctor, the Chief Medical Officer of the Rothschild Hospital, Paris, treasurer of the Curie Foundation and the Chair of the Central Committee of Keren haYesod, France. During the time of Vichy France, he was arrested and transported with his wife from his homeland to Auschwitz Concentration Camp where they were murdered.
Jacqueline Feldman is a French sociologist and author. She worked as a researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research until retirement in 2001, but has continued to publish until 2020. She co-founded FMA, one of the ancestors that later would become Mouvement de libération des femmes in 1970.
Frede was a French host and manager of cabarets in Paris and Biarritz. Openly lesbian, Frede was the first to allow women to dance together in a classic cabaret. She is known for her relationships with actresses Marlene Dietrich, Zina Rachevsky, Lana Marconi, and María Félix. She has been featured as a character in Patrick Modiano's books.
Capucine Anav is a French television host, actress and producer. She is a former columnist in the television program Touche pas à mon poste ! on C8.
Denise Holstein is an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor and Holocaust witness, who was liberated on 15 April 1945. As a Holocaust witness, Holstein tells her story in two books and in a documentary made by a student from the Lycée Corneille in Rouen. For almost fifty years, Holstein never spoke about her life before writing about it. As a Holocaust witness, Holstein visits school children, to describe and share her experiences.
Suzanne Birnbaum, was born in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, and died in Nantes. She was a French Jewish woman, a shopkeeper in Paris and a survivor of deportation to Auschwitz during the Second World War. She is known for having written an autobiographical account of her arrest and deportation from Drancy to Auschwitz.
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French novelist Patrick Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation." He became the 15th Frenchman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature after J. M. G. Le Clézio in 2008.
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