Aude Yung-de Prevaux

Aude Yung-de Prévaux was a 23-year-old student in 1966 when she learned that she was the daughter of two heroes of the French Resistance in World War II, Jacques and Lotke de Prévaux. Using tattered letters and military records she found in forgotten trunks as well as personal interviews, she spent years reconstructing the lives of the parents she never knew. Jacques Trolley de Prevaux was a brilliant and handsome Catholic naval officer with a gift for diplomacy. Her mother Charlotte Leitner, known as Lotka, was a beautiful American-born Polish Jew who worked as a fashion model in Paris and was 20 years his junior. They married despite the opposition of their families. During the Nazi Occupation, they became two of the most important Resistance fighters in the south of France. They were betrayed to the Gestapo in 1944 and sent to prison; just days before the Allies arrived, they were executed. Their orphan daughter Aude was raised by a paternal aunt and uncle and grew up to become a journalist. She is a frequent contributor to French and Swiss publications, and is a correspondent for the daily French newspaper Liberation in Geneva. Her book Love in the Tempest of History: A French Resistance Story, was published in 2001.