Brenda Maddox

On the Stein Trail

Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice

By

Yale University Press 229pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

Good question: how did two Jewish lesbians survive in Nazi-occupied France? Janet Malcolm addresses the mystery. Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B Toklas, both from Jewish-American business families, refused all suggestions that they return to the United States or steal quietly into neutral Switzerland. Instead they stayed put, mainly at Bilignin, their village in eastern France, and watched others being rounded up and sent to German camps.

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