Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Psychology of Social Class
One of the most terrible features of World War II was undoubtedly the system of inverse selection followed by the Nazi régime. In the past - even in 1914 - 1arge-scale wars consisted of vast, indifferent thinnings-out of fighting forces usually engaged in battling for position and wearing the other side down. But in this war those with the finest character, judgment and integrity in the occupied countries singled themselves out by their desire not to give up the struggle, and the enemy were able to decimate an élite as they liked; and we now know in what numbers and by what methods they did so. In this way scholars who were not men of action by vocation found themselves connected with the resistance movement through their moral strength, the continuity and uprightness of their thinking and the courageous support they gave to the actual fighters and, first and foremost, to their own close relations. So Maurice Halbwachs, of the College de France, arrested by the Gestapo in Paris in July 1944, died in February 1945 at Buchenwald.
His friends did not abandon hope for a long time. They could not bear to think that a family which had already been cruelly and directly struck down three times Should again suffer. But Maurice Halbwachs could not withstand the methodical application of hardships. One of his sons, who had been arrested shortly before him, and whom he joined in the camp, was with him as he lay dying. And so to the suffering of so many of her people, the destruction of noble and Splendid young lives mourned silently and inconsolably, was added the loss of one of France's great thinkers, a man with a mind and a heart of rare distinction, whose tact and scrupulousness were matched only by his goodness. It is fitting that we should still write of him.
During the worst days of the occupation Maurice Halb wachs would invite me to Visit him whenever my clandestine journeys sent me to Paris. Doub'tless he took other equally great risks without even perceiving the danger.
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