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Pyre Jacques: Resplendent in Victory. By Francis J. Murphy. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies. 1998. Pp. xiii, 200. $10.95 paperback.)
Pere Jacques, at the head of the line of survivors, led the devastated group the three-mile distance from the Gusen satellite prison to Mauthausen, the so-called labor camp, the day the Red Cross arrived to begin repatriation of the French and Belgian prisoners. Exhausted and sick as he was at the time, he was described as "resplendent in victory." Thus the title of Father Francis Murphy's biography of Lucian Bunel, better known by his name in religion, Pere Jacques of Jesus. Louis Malle's film Au Revoir les Enfants focused attention on this outstanding humanitarian who was imprisoned for sheltering three Jewish children at the Petit-College of Saint Therese in Avon, France, where Pere Jacques was headmaster during the Nazi occupation of France.
Father Murphy's fine book is composed of two parts. Part one describes the life of Pere Jacques from his birth in Barentin to his burial...