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Victor A. Pollak
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Saving the Light at Chartres: How the Great Cathedral and Its Stained-Glass Treasures Were Rescued during World War II Hardcover – March 16, 2020

by Victor A. Pollak (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
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Built around 1200 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site that draws more than a million visitors and pilgrims each year, Chartres Cathedral is one of the jewels of Western Civilization. How Chartres Cathedral and its priceless stained glass (today the largest such collection in one location) survived World War II’s widespread destruction of cultural monuments is one of the great stories of recent history.

Saving the Light at Chartres begins half a decade before World War II, when a young French architect developed a plan to save the cathedral’s precious stained glass. As war engulfed Europe in the fall of 1939, master glass artisans dismantled the hundreds of windows, and soldiers, tradesmen, and laborers with local volunteers crated thousands of glass panels, stowed them in the crypt, and months later—just before German invaders reached Chartres—hauled them across the country to an underground quarry.

This effort to save the stained glass is but a prologue. By August 1944, the U.S. Army had broken out of Normandy and was racing across France toward Paris and the Seine. Chartres became a key battleground. Allied bombing blew out the cathedral’s temporary window coverings, and when the Americans—assisted by French Resistance fighters—entered the city in the face of unexpectedly heavy defiance and snipers in the cathedral, many soldiers believed German artillery spotters were occupying the cathedral’s spires. When Colonel Welborn Griffith Jr.—a senior operations officer of Twentieth Corps in Patton’s Third Army—arrived, some were pressing to countermand the army’s standing order to avoid the cathedral and threatened to destroy it to neutralize the German spotters. Griffith was skeptical. He inspected the cathedral himself, climbed its towers, but found no Germans, so he rang the bell, waved an American flag, and ordered that the cathedral be spared, saving it from destruction. Griffith would be killed later that day.

Victor Pollak tells both stories—the rescue of the windows and Colonel Griffith’s fateful role—in a compelling narrative. Saving the Light at Chartres honors the government and local teams who saved the windows, the Resistance that performed a vital role in the liberation of Chartres, Welborn Griffith, and the enduring treasure that is Chartres Cathedral.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    440 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Stackpole Books
  4. Publication date
    March 16, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6.33 x 1.16 x 9.34 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0811739015
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0811739016
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Victor A. Pollak, an attorney in private practice as a partner in law firms in Chicago and Salt Lake City for more than thirty years, has received continuing professional recognition. Pollak graduated from Antioch College, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law with honors, and Pacific University with an MFA in Writing. He has traveled often in Europe, including to Chartres, Paris and southwestern France, and has worked on this book for five years. He divides his time between Tucson and Salt Lake City.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stackpole Books (March 16, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 440 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811739015
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811739016
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.62 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.33 x 1.16 x 9.34 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

About the author

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Victor A. Pollak

Victor A. Pollak

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Writer and lawyer Victor Pollak has traveled frequently in Europe, including France, where he became fascinated learning about preservation of cultural monuments, accomplished so successfully by the French. He has also visited the Middle East, Mexico and South America. Saving the Light at Chartres is his first book. He divides his time between Tucson and Washington State.

Pollak was born in Evanston, Illinois to a father who had emigrated from Austria in 1938 and a mother who had grown up in Detroit as one of seven daughters of Hungarian immigrants. As a boy in the 1950s, Pollak lived for a year in Vienna with his parents, brother and sister, and attended public school. He grew up in Evanston and earned a B.A. in philosophy and communications at Antioch College. While in college, he worked in radio, a sound recording studio in Philadelphia, film production, teaching in an outdoor school in New Hampshire, as a junior executive in the toy department of nationally recognized flagship store in New York City, and as a junior instructor for two summers in month-long wilderness expeditions of the Colorado Outward Bound School. After a year in publishing, he entered Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, from which he graduated with honors. He went on to serve as a law clerk to a Federal Court of Appeals judge and began his more than thirty years of law practice as a partner with law firms in Chicago and Salt Lake City. While in Chicago, he served for several years as co-chair of an international practice group that opened American law offices in countries in Eastern Europe, including in Warsaw in 1990 and Prague in 1991. After moving his family to Salt Lake City, he served as co-founder, CEO and general counsel to a biomedical R&D start-up company. In 2019, he earned his MFA in Writing from Pacific University.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
9 global ratings

Top review from the United States

JZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
I had no idea this book would be so interesting. Author Pollack thoroughly researched this and tells the story of those who participated in detail. Fascinating.
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