JBM 2022 - Gioia Diliberto

The JCCNS 2022 Jewish Book Month Speaker Series welcomed author Gioia Diliberto on Nov. 2, 2022, to speak about her book "Coco at the Ritz." She was interviewed by Izzi Abrams, past president of JCCNS, librarian, and book group moderator.
For more information about the JBM Speaker Series, please visit jccns.org/jewi...
About "Coco at the Ritz":
One morn­ing in late August 1944, as World War II draws to a close, Coco Chanel is arrest­ed in her suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on charges of trea­son to France, stem­ming from her romance with a Nazi spy. Her two-hour inter­ro­ga­tion at the Pre­fec­ture of Police offers a grip­ping bat­tle of wits between the famous­ly acer­bic design­er and a hos­tile sol­dier of the Resis­tance. Flash­back scenes of Chanel’s life dur­ing the Paris Occu­pa­tion explore her moti­va­tions and her betray­al of her Jew­ish part­ners and a close Jew­ish friend. Though Chanel epit­o­mizes the treach­ery of France dur­ing World War II, at heart, author Gioia Diliberto’s nov­el is about the choic­es one woman made when the stakes were the high­est and the per­ilous, even dead­ly, consequences to those around her. In today’s world, a time when anti­semitism and general hatred seem to be explod­ing anew, Coco at the Ritz presents a cau­tion­ary tale about the neces­si­ty of stand­ing against evil when it stares you, even seduc­tive­ly, right in the face.