For Rebecca Thompson, a French teacher at St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, a passion for history and language led to an incredible five-year journey - translating and publishing a long-lost WWII memoir that had never been printed in its original French.
The memoir was written by a young French student, Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers when he was forcibly deported to Nazi Germany under the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) program. He documented his experience in journals and scrapbooks, later compiling them into a memoir in his 90s. But his story remained hidden on a small self-publishing website… until Thompson found it.
She spent three years translating it into French and an additional two refining the text with the assistance of a professor from the University of Chicago. Her biggest challenge? Tracking down Pasquiers’ granddaughter in rural France, who embraced the project and provided never-before-seen photos and scrapbook pages. Now, Passing Misery is more than a book—it’s a testament to resilience, memory and the power of storytelling.
For Thompson, the project isn’t just about history. It’s about helping students and readers see the past through the eyes of those who lived it.
"It's easy to think of history in broad strokes," she says. "But when you read the words of someone who lived it, you realize how deeply personal it was. And still is."