Author: Anne Whiteside, The Moon in Splinters
2025-12-13 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | Golden Gate Valley - Golden Gate Valley Meeting Room
The Moon in Splinters (2025) tells the gripping story of Maurice Pertschuk, a young British Jewish agent sent by the Special Operations Executive into Nazi-occupied France, where he led a major sabotage network before being betrayed, captured, and murdered at Buchenwald just days before its liberation. Long shrouded in family silence and official blame, his fate is re-examined by his niece, Anne Whiteside, who uncovers a tale of heroism, betrayal, and historical injustice. Through years of investigation and survivor interviews, Whiteside challenges the narrative and illuminates the courage of ordinary people resisting tyranny—offering a powerful warning for modern times.

Our constitutional democracy was inspired in part by the French, whose fundamental values - liberty, equality, and fraternity for its citizens - were trampled on by the Vichy government 85 years ago. Like many authoritarian regimes, the Vichy blamed immigrants and other “undesirables” for France’s financial woes, and called for a return to a mythical, racially “pure” France. The Resistance, a largely civilian movement made up of people who refused to accept the loss of these fundamental values, gradually gained momentum; eventually everyone claimed to be a Resistant.

Anne Whiteside first studied Franco-British relations listening in on conversations between her French mother and British father. She’s spent the last 10 years researching her mother’s brother’s work in the French Resistance. Early on she studied art, anthropology, then did a doctorate in educational linguistics, about which she’s written/edited a number of articles and books. For over 30 years she taught English to immigrants, teachers at San Francisco State University and undergraduates at U.C. Berkeley; she’s lectured in Ireland, Spain, Algeria and France, and had a Fulbright teaching/research fellowship in Mexico. The Moon in Splinters is her first book of literary non-fiction.
