Tereska Torrès

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Tereska Torrès (born September 3, 1920 in Paris , † September 20, 2012 there ) was a French writer .

Life

Tereska Torrès was the daughter of the Polish sculptor Marek Szwarc (1892–1958) and his wife Guina Pinkus (1895–1973). She spent her childhood in La Ruda , an artists' colony in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. During the Second World War (→ Western Campaign ), she and her mother fled to London via Lisbon ; She got the papers she needed from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes . During this time, her father fought against the Germans as a member of the Polish army in exile .

In 1940 Torrès volunteered for the Forces françaises libres and worked as a secretary for Charles de Gaulle in his headquarters in London. There she made the acquaintance of Georges Torrès and married him in May 1944 in London. As a member of the 2nd division blindée , Georges fought against the Germans and was killed in fighting in Lorraine in October 1944 . Their daughter Dominique (* 1945) was born four months later.

After the war ended, Torrès settled in Paris again. In 1947 she accompanied the American writer Meyer Levin to his film Lo Tafhidenu ; a documentary about Polish Jews (→ Bricha ) who fled the Holocaust and tried to reach Palestine .

In 1948 Torrès married Meyer Levin in Paris and had two sons with him: Gabriel (* 1948) and Mikael (* 1954).

Since her youth, Torrès kept diaries, which were later published as a contemporary document. With her novel “Women's Barracks” she had a successful, but also scandalous, debut as a writer in the USA in 1950 . During her lifetime, Torrès banned a French edition of it, which could only appear after her death. The American edition tried to ban the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Material under the direction of politician Ezekiel Candler Gathings .

reception

Torrès began her first novel in 1937 and was able to publish it in France after the war; As a pseudonym she chose "Georges Achard", the battle name of her husband Georges Torrès. Her most successful novel “Women's Barracks” was translated into English by her second husband Meyer Levin and deals with a lesbian relationship .

Of her autobiographical works, her diary from the Second World War comes first. Her report reads almost like a documentary - “Le choix. Mémoires à trois voix “- about her parents' conversion shortly before their birth. The originals of her unpublished diaries are kept at Boston University .

Works

Autobiographical
  • The Converts . Knopf, New York 1970 (report on her childhood and youth)
  • Les maisons hantées de Meyer Levin . Phébus, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-7529-0066-X (EA Paris 1974; A report on her husband's enthusiasm for Anne Frank's diary )
  • Une Française libre. Journal 1939-1945 . Phèbus, Paris 2000 ISBN 2-85940-611-5 (EA Paris 1981: Les Années anglaises. Journal intime de guerre, 1939–1945 )
  • Le Choix. Memoires à trois voix . Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 2002 ISBN 2-220-05119-6
  • Fearless. On the way to Palestine. Tereska Torrès' film diary from 1947 (contemporary witnesses from the Jewish Museum ). Dumont, Cologne 2004 ISBN 3-8321-7890-2
Novels
  • Le sable et l'écume . Gallimard, Paris 1946
  • Women's barracks . Translated from Meyer Levin (under the pseudonym George Cummings; compared to the handwriting "changed in a moralizing way"). Fawcett, New York 1950; again The Feminist Press, New York 2005 ISBN 978-1-55861-494-9
    • French original: Jeunes femmes en uniforme . Rework by the author (without the moralizing authority by Meyer Levin). Phébus, Paris 2011 ISBN 978-2-7529-0515-4
    • Übers. Melita Ollendorf: Women's barracks. Novel . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1969 (EA Hamburg 1960; based on the English Cummings version)
    • New transl. Inka Marter: women's barracks. Novel. Louisoder, Munich 2015. After the French. Original. With the preface by "George Cummings" from the Engl. Issued in 1950
  • Le mazes . Del Duca, Paris 1958
  • Pas encore . Del Duca, Paris 1958
    • Übers. Melita Ollendorf: Not yet ... Roman . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1962 (EA Zsolnay 1959)
  • Les Poupées de cendre . Phébus, Paris 2003 ISBN 2-85940-877-0 (EA Paris 1979)
  • Le pays des chuchotements . Séguier, Paris 1987 ISBN 2-906284-33-5
  • The dangerous games . The Dial Press, New York 1957
    • Übers. Melita Ollendorf: Paris Quartet . Zsolnay, Hamburg 1960

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Son of the lawyer Henry Torrès (1891-1966) and stepson of the politician Léon Blum (1872-1950).
  2. ↑ a b Translator Inka Marter on the edition history , October 3, 2015
  3. ↑ Excerpt free of charge in We recommend reading it in , Transit Buchverlag, on Amazon Kindle , Kindle . The publisher expired in 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Torrès, Tereska
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levin, Tereska; Szwarc, Tereska; Torres, Tereska; Achad, George; Achad, Georges
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 2012
Place of death Paris