Jacques Lusseyran was born in Paris, France on September 19, 1924. He became totally blind in a school accident at the age of 8. In the spring of 1941, at the age of 17, he formed a Resistance group called the Volunteers of Liberty with 52 other boys. The group later merged with another Resistance group called D�fense de la France. On July 20, 1943, he was betrayed by a member of his resistance group and arrested by the Gestapo. He was sent to Buchenwald and was liberated in April 1945. After World War II, he became a professor of French literature at Case Western Reserve University. He wrote several books including Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writings of Jacques Lusseyran… and And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II. He died in a car accident on July 27, 1971.