Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation

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This is an utterly absorbing read as Sebba explores in minute and nuanced detail the lives of women during and after the Nazi Occupation of Paris. Organised in a year by year chronology, this moves from the early German charm offensive ('German soldiers: they were fantastic - tall, tanned, Wagnerian') to the gradual closing of the fist as, with the active collaboration of the Vichy government, Jews, résistants, Allied spies and airmen, were rounded up, imprisoned, deported, interrogated, tortured and killed. The lives lived by french women during the Nazi occupation of WW2, and wow, what lives they lived! This book covers the stories of collaborators, those who collaborated in a big way and those who did so in a much smaller way, resistors and victims. Paris had the whole gamut. A fascinating read for anyone interested in this period, the book highlights the life of the times, as lived by the women of the times. Incredibly brave women, sad women and greedy women are all portrayed vividly, the book draws on accounts written during the period. The Monday Book". The Independent. 1 October 2007. Archived from the original on 2 November 2012 . Retrieved 26 September 2009. Sebba’s narrative is increasingly driven by her search for an explanation as to why some of these women chose to risk their lives and resist when they, like so many fellow Parisennes, could have saved their skins. What made a young lawyer, Denise du Fournier, give up her refuge in Portugal and return to Paris early in the war to join the Comet escape line, helping to hide shot-down allied airmen? What made Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian-born Parisian and a pacifist, volunteer to work behind Nazi lines for the British Special Operations Executive? Stanford, Peter (15 August 2004). "The Exiled Collector by Anne Sebba". London. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022 . Retrieved 26 September 2009.

Les Parisiennes chronicles the lives of French women, in particular those women of Paris, during the Second World War. Despite the book’s title, some of the women mention therein is not in Paris, usually because of the War. Sebba counts for this quite nicely by counting Parisenne as a style or sense instead just a living situation. And she really isn’t wrong when you think about it. Joffee, Linda (14 February 1994). "Book Review". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022 . Retrieved 26 September 2009.

A criticism is that the tales of the women are interspersed as you go along and this can be a bit confusing but I got used to it and didn't mind so much. There were some notable omissions such as Jacqueline Baker and Virginia Hall? I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it wasn't possible to include every woman. Despite never having had the vote or even legally allowed to have a banking account, growing numbers contributed in small or moderate ways to helping Jews escape or hide or providing information or material support to aid those active in the Resistance. I like the example of brothel madams who hid subversives or Jews in their establishments. And the case of Edith Piaf, who drew complaints for aiding the Nazi propaganda efforts with performances at detention centers, but who used the group photos with the prisoners to create fake identity papers for many of them. I particularly loved the actions of an art archiver who was subverted by the Nazis to help with all the cataloging and distribution of stolen art treasures (Goering himself was long on the trough of that bonanza), but all the while she was keeping a secret record of the origin and disposition of each piece, and after the war used her records to good effect in recovering a lot of the art. I was also impressed with the heroism of Jenny Rousseau, a prisoner who one day refused to continue with forced labor in a munitions plant as against the Geneva Convention. The toughness of a such a choice at risk of one’s own life was revealed when we learn that the action spurred broad and brutal retribution against a whole pool of factory laborers. A similar tragic consequence applied to the work of the organization UGIF (Union Generale des Israelites de France) , which worked diligently to support the feeding and housing of orphans and refugees, but had their records of locations of Jews used for roundups by the Nazis. Sebba has included a very helpful 'cast' list of all of the women whom she writes about in Les Parisiennes. These women are variously actresses, the wives of diplomats, students, secret agents, writers, models, and those in the resistance movement, amongst others. She has assembled a huge range of voices, which enable her to build up a full and varied picture of what life in Occupied Paris was like. Rather than simply end her account when the German troops leave, Sebba has chosen to write about two further periods: 'Liberation (1944-1946)', and 'Reconstruction (1947-1949)'. Les Parisiennes is, in consequence of a great deal of research, a very personal collective history. Rollyson, Carl (8 June 2021). "Review: Ethel Rosenberg biography shows how her execution defined the Cold War, horrified the world". Datebook. San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide . Retrieved 8 June 2021. Anne Sebba ( née Rubinstein; born 1951) is a British biographer, lecturer and journalist. She is the author of nine non-fiction books for adults, two biographies for children, and several introductions to reprinted classics.

Anne Sebba writes in her extensive history of the lives of Parisian women during WWII that it’s our task to understand, not to judge. And the women whose lives are covered range across such a broad spectrum, from those with selfless motives and actions to those who didn’t act as honorably as might be expected. Left behind are the women and children, whom they need to protect and feed. The choices made by the women are unbelieveable--some resist, some depart and others collaborate--some even collaborate while also resisting. All of the stories are heart-breaking and over and over I asked myself, what would I do, would I be able to survive some of the horrors , how would I protect my child? In the prologue, the author describes meeting Annette Krajcer in 2015, one of the few survivors of the notorious French round-ups of Jews. Annette and her sister were imprisoned in Drancy alongside 13,000 people, 4,000 of whom were children. It was only by chance that a family member secured the girls’ release, narrowly sparing them from being transported to Auschwitz. Similarly, whilst Séverine Darcque was not born until long after the end of the Second World War, she owes her life to Pierrette Pauchard, who helped to hide Séverine’s future grandmother from the round-ups.Aside from a few show trials, few collaborators were really punished after the war. Most of these were convicted under a new law which stripped their citizenship rights and eligibility for government jobs for a period of time. De Gaulle judged that the country needed to concentrate on recovery and did not pursue close investigations. Also, it was hard to judge people criminally for aiding the Nazis when collaboration was the national policy of the Vichy government. But throughout every community, the French made their own retributions against the women seen as guilty of “collaboration horizontale”. An estimated 20,000 women were subject to public head shaving, beatings, and other humiliation. Another estimate has it that by mid-1943, there were about 80,000 official claims for support from French women for children fathered by Germans in the occupation. The author urges readers to consider how many of these liaisons were rape or under duress, how many were from natural human attraction and affection, and how all pale in comparison to collaboration that truly aided and abetted Nazi horrors or served unwarranted profiteering at the expense of others. Channel 4 Reveals Wallis Simpson's Secret Letters" (Press release). Channel Four Television Corporation. 23 August 2011 . Retrieved 22 April 2018.