In Falaise, Bernard Martin dedicates his book which recounts the heroic acts of his grandparents

Bernard Martin spent all his childhood in the Norman campaign to Tournai-sur-Dive (Orne)not far from Falaise (Calvados).

Today retired from the public service, and residing on the coast of mother -of -pearl in Ouistreham, he decides “to write some childhood memories”.

The life of his grandparents under the occupation

In view of his first success in 2020, he continued to write “books that mainly focus on the history of Normans and Normandy from the early 1950s to the 1970s”.

The 73-year-old has just released his 4th book “refugees under the windows of the militia”, which tells the life of his grandparents under the occupation.

His 4th Book

In 2003, the author Bernard Martin learned fortuitously that, Ernest and Valentine, his paternal grandparents, hid a Jewish tailor Félix and his daughter Madeleine, then aged 18, during the occupation.

It is for him a revelation. He measures the immense risks taken by his own. At the time, they were Métayers, and their master who lives 300 meters from their farm, is a militiaman from the start.

“A story that I learned well after the death of my grandparents,” says the author who narrated it with great emotion.

When I knew it, I started looking for this Jewish family that I found! These people taught me a lot of things that even my father and uncle did not know … My grandmother made acts of courage that she never talked about to her own children.

This work tells the common story of these two Jewish French people who have become clandestine in their own country and those who hid them, linking their two families forever.

A romanticized story drawn from real facts which took place in the department of Vienne.

Saturday, May 3, 2025 between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., within the “Tour la Page” bookstore of Falaise, the author Bernard Martin will present his books “refugees under the windows of the militia”, “The Les Conquestables de Mézeray”, “Marie Bisson, a Norman groceryman in the turmoil” and “The Rutabaga affair”.

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