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It might seem odd to rank this memory-photo (1942) among the war images, but once again,
the image stands mainly for what it conceals. Here, from right to left is someone I don’t know
(sorry about that) -then Pierre Citron, who was to become our most eminent Balzac scholar
-then our two « Chinese of Lyons » (what became of them under Mao?) -Franz Thomassin,
an erudite genius, a friend of Cocteau, who voluntarily became a bum and died in poverty
-Joseph Rovan, who barely returned from Dachau concentration camp before investing all
his intelligence in the service of Franco-German reconciliation, as he still does today -and
then François Vernet, who did not come back from Dachau, but left five books and the certainty
that he would have been one of the great French writers. That’s what’s called a generation.