Starting in the fall 1939, Irène Némirovsky has placed her daughters in the Burgundian village of Issy-l'Évêque, where she joins them in May 1940. The defeat of the French inspired him an ambitious novel, funny and bitter, provisionally titled Panic... She is convinced to write, on this subject, her War and Peace. She then completes for the editions Albin Michel, who continue to support it, a biography of Chekhov.
But, subject to the prohibitions of the Statute of the Jews, her husband removed from the bank that had employed him for fifteen years, she is forced to publish under pseudonym in the anti-Semitic Gringoire, such “ Lace in the midst of savages ”. When, early 1942 even Gringoire stops helping her, the French inspire only «hatred and contempt». Arrested on July 13 and driven to Pithiviers, Irène Némirovsky four days later, followed by her husband
on October 9. It is at Denise and Elizabeth, their daughters, that it will be necessary to guard over sixty years on the manuscript of French suite...
