Targeting and arresting Aubrion and several of his cohorts, he gave them the choice of death or the impossible task of creating and distributing Le Soir. La Libre Belgique newspaper, published by the FI, was on Gruppenfurer Wolff's radar. Aubrion, a gifted linguist, used puns and jokes in his writing to entertain and create hope for the downtrodden Belgians. Before the war, Marc Aubrion was a theater critic and playwright who also wrote newspaper articles.

The Belgians and the Germans ultimately wanted the same thing, 'to sway the public'. The Front de l'Independance (FI) was a resistance organization that published the infamous La Libre Belgique. 'When the Nazis invaded Belgium taking our printing presses, our radios, our books.they took our words and thoughts, too.' Le Soir, arguably Belgium's most important newspaper, was turned into 'a cheap propaganda machine'. 'Propaganda is 'black' if it is supposedly from one side, but is actually from the other.' The citizenry of the city of Brussels was dispirited. Wolff, Germany's book burning crusader, was primarily involved in Black Propaganda.

Gruppenfuhrer August Wolff headed the Ministry of Perception Management administered by the Gestapo. It is a moving and powerful ode to the importance of the written word and to the unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history. Ramzipoor’s dazzling debut novel illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by time.

The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke, and they have only eighteen days to tell it.įeaturing an unforgettable cast of characters and stunning historical detail, E.R. While pretending to do the Nazis’ bidding, they will instead publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin-daring to laugh in the face of their oppressors. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea. The Nazis track down Aubrion’s team and give them an impossible choice: turn the resistance newspapers into a Nazi propaganda bomb that will sway public opinion against the Allies, or be killed. Helene’s world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. But they would not be silenced.īrussels, 1943.

In this triumphant debut inspired by true events, a ragtag gang of journalists and resistance fighters risk everything for an elaborate scheme to undermine the Reich.

The Ventriloquists by E.R. Ramzipoor