Elisabeth Gille

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Élisabeth Gille (born March 20, 1937 in Paris as Élisabeth Epstein ; † September 30, 1996 ) was a French writer and translator who also made a successful career in various French publishing houses.

biography

childhood

Gille's parents were Michel Epstein , a trained physics engineer of Russian origin and the then well-known novelist Irène Némirovsky , whose family had fled the Ukraine via Finland to France. Elisabeth Gille had a sister, Denise Epstein (1929-2013), eight years older .

In childhood, Gille was always called Babet. This name appears frequently in Irène Némirovsky's estate. After the declaration of war on September 1, 1939, Gilles' parents decided to take the children outside of the capital to safety from possible bombing. Elisabeth and Denise stayed with relatives in Issy-l'Évêque , Saône-et-Loire . After their parents joined them in 1941, the family lived under sophisticated conditions in the Hôtel des Voyageurs d'Issy-l'Évêque, sometimes together with soldiers from the German occupation. During the occupation, Gille always had to wear the yellow Star of David on her clothes because of the Jewish origin of her parents. On the other hand, the Jewish faith played no role in family life. Némirovsky and her children eventually converted to Catholic Christianity in order to be better protected from further reprisals.

On July 13, 1942, Irène Némirovsky was arrested by French gendarmes. A short time later she was deported to Auschwitz , where she died in the infirmary on August 17, 1942. Michel Epstein drew the authorities' attention to himself through desperate attempts to obtain the release of his wife. He was arrested and also deported. Immediately afterwards the gendarmes went to the community school to arrest Denise Epstein too, but her teacher managed to hide her. On the day of his arrival on November 6, 1942, Michel Epstein died in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Gille and her sister were now on their own, a foster mother, still employed by Nemirovsky, helped the two to escape. The children were left with a little jewelry, a few letters, photos and a thick manuscript from their mother, on which she had worked feverishly in the last months of her life. They always took the suitcase in which they kept the remains with them on their further adventurous escape; the manuscript was thus saved.

Until the end of the war, Gille and her sister escaped deportation only by going into hiding and keeping their origins secret. First in a Catholic boarding school in the Bordeaux region, later in damp cellars and elsewhere. Gille and her sister were meanwhile doggedly wanted by the Nazis, and both narrowly escaped arrest several times. The publisher Albin Michel , who had already supported Nemirovsky financially, although he had not been able to publish her works during the war, played a decisive role in saving them.

When, after the end of the Second World War, the survivors of the concentration camps gradually arrived at the Gare de l'Est in Paris, the two sisters set off for Paris and stood there day after day with a sign with their name around their necks. Elisabeth and Denise also looked for their parents at the Hôtel Lutetia , which had been converted into a reception center for returning deportees. At that point in time they could not have known that they had long since died. When they finally gave up hope of seeing their parents again, they went to Nice to see their grandmother Fanny Némirovsky, who had lived there in a luxurious apartment on Avenue du Président-Wilson throughout the war. However, Gille and her sister were strictly turned away.

Elisabeth Gille was five years old when she last saw her mother. Until then, she and her sister had often been looked after by the foster mother. Her whole life has been shaped by this pain. Her work Le Mirador was published in 1992 : mémoires rêvés (English: 'Dreamy memories'), an imaginary biography of her mother that she never really got to know.

Manuscript for Némirovsky's "Suite française"

Believing that it was a diary-like work, the children kept the manuscript left by their mother unread for decades. According to my own information, it was too painful to read. More than half a century later, Denise Epstein and Élisabeth Gille made the decision to donate their mother's last work to the Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine . At that time Gille was already suffering from cancer and was working on the Mémoires . More years passed before it, although largely unfinished, was published under the name Suite française and established the renewed fame of Irène Némirovsky, which had been forgotten after the war. Elisabeth Gille died without ever reading her mother's legacy.

job

Elisabeth Gille devotes her professional life to literature. First as a translator of promising science fiction literature , including authors such as JG Ballard , John Brunner , Michael Moorcock , Anne McCaffrey and Clifford D. Simak . She was the editor of the Presence du future series at Denoël and, in addition to the modern English-speaking Aurors, also printed new French writers such as Jean-Pierre Andrevon , Jacques Barberi , Francois Barthelot , Serge Brusselo , Jean-Claude Dunyach , Jean-Pierre Hubert , Emmanuel Jouanne , Jean-Pierre Ligny , Jean-Pierre Vernay and Élisabeth Vonarburg . She introduced the new authors in two anthologies : Futurs au présent and Superfuturs .

She has also translated works by Kate Millett , Peter Taylor , Alison Lurie and Mary Gordon . In the course of her professional life, she has published some highly regarded works for various publishers, including Denoël and Flammarion . She has also published a play and three novels as a writer .

She has won several prizes, including the Prix ​​Goncourt (1996), the Prix ​​Renaudot , the Prix ​​Médicis , the Prix ​​Femina (1997) and the Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle .

family

She had a son who now lives in France.

Works

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gille, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Epstein, Élisabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1996