Your never too late to learn something new, and I have to admit I have heard of few French singers, 'Maurice Chevalier', 'Johnny Hallyday', 'Sasha Distel 'and 'Edith Piaf' and that's about it, so the name 'Barbara' (which was her stage name) or 'Monique Serf' which was her birth name, was a new one to me.
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| Barbara aka Monique Serf |
Apparently, outside the confines of the English speaking world, she was something of a continental superstar in both France and Germany until her recent death ..... she was mainly lauded for her role in helping the French and German nations to start the process of reconciliation after the second world war, by renditions of her French / German songs, particularly her songs about a German town called Göttingen which she visited soon after the war and loved.
What made this all the more remarkable was that as a French Jew, she had been forced to flee from the Nazis, and had to hide from them throughout the war years, with certain death her fate if they caught her family ......... now there's a street (Barbarastraße) named after her. Here's her singing on YouTube.
See, bet you weren't expecting to learn about a new singer when you came here today.
