Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers was born in 1920 and grew up in northeastern France. He was just beginning his career as a secondary school teacher when World War II broke out. In 1943, Pasquiers was requisitioned to go work in Germany with the Service du Travail Obligatoire. After evading capture for several months, Pasquiers turned himself in at a labor office and was deported to Berlin, where he worked a clerical job for the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG). Pasquiers was repatriated to France in the summer of 1945, where he took up teaching again, dedicating his educational career to facilitating French-German student exchanges. Pasquiers died in 2013 in southwestern France.

Rebecca L. Thompson is the Chair of Modern Languages at St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute in Buffalo, New York. She holds a PhD in Literature with a focus in Translation Studies from the University of Texas and specializes in leftist and oppositional translation theories, collaboration and culpability in Vichy and Occupied France, and contemporary Francophone literature. Her recent publications include the translation, Little Wet-Paint Girl (Athabasca University Press, 2022).