Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis

Description

Lesbian partners known for cross-dressing and creating the kind of gender-bending work that the Nazis would come to call “degenerate art,” Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists who attended political rallies with Surrealists and socialized with artists like Gertrude Stein, to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops. Paper Bullets is a compelling World War II story about the galvanizing power of art, and of resistance, and tells the story of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign by this unlikely pair. Hunted by the secret field police, Lucy and Suzanne were finally betrayed in 1944 when the Germans imprisoned them and sentenced them to death. Ultimately they survived, but even in jail they continued to fight the Nazis by reaching out to other prisoners and spreading a message of hope.