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"What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until--finally--renewal and retribution. Even at the darkest moments of Occupation, with the Swastika flying from the Eiffel Tower and pet dogs abandoned howling on the streets, glamour was ever present. French women wore lipstick. Why? It was women more than men who came face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis--perhaps selling them their clothes or travelling alongside them on the Metro, where a German soldier had priority over seats. By looking at a wide range of individuals from collaborators to resisters, actresses and prostitutes to teachers and writers, Anne Sebba shows that women made life-and-death decisions every day, and often did whatever they needed to survive. Her fascinating cast of characters includes both native Parisian women and those living in Paris temporarily--American women and Nazi wives, spies, mothers, mistresses, and fashion and jewellery designers. Some women, like the heiress Béatrice de Camondo or novelist Irène Némirovsky, converted to Catholicism; others like lesbian racing driver Violette Morris embraced the Nazi philosophy; only a handful, like Coco Chanel, retreated to the Ritz with a German lover. A young medical student, Anne Spoerry, gave lethal injections to camp inmates one minute but was also known to have saved the lives of Jews. But this is not just a book about wartime. In enthralling detail Sebba explores the aftershock of the Second World War and the choices demanded. How did the women who survived to see the Liberation of Paris come to terms with their actions and those of others? Although politics lies at its heart, Les Parisiennes is a fascinating account of the lives of people of the city and, specifically, in this most feminine of cities, its women and young girls"--From publisher's website.… (more)
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This
Life did change for everyone, especially the women. Most of the men went away to war, leaving the women behind to carry on with live the best way they could. And it was indeed a difficult time. Food and other necessities of life were in very short supply. The Germans were the only ones that could afford food – or they just took it. Women faced daily humiliation as they had to queue for hours and then beg (and pay) for the few rations that were available.
Tremendous efforts were made to hide works of art – those in galleries and private Jewish collections. Part of Hitler’s plan was the intention to destroy any sense of belonging by depriving Jews of what they owned. He planned to create his own art gallery.
The British were using women in combatant activities, although it was forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Thus, these women had no protection if they were captured. History has failed to note that many women were among those deported.
When the war was over people who survived were suspected of being collaborators with the Germans. Jews, political prisoners, and prisoners of war recently liberated from camps and prisons, poured into the city – a city in no way ready to accommodate them. Many returned with serious medical issues that Paris was ill prepared to deal with. Perhaps most devastating was that many returned to find that everything they had owned had been taken.
In an effort to try to return to “normal”, women were encouraged to “return to a time of innocence and femininity, to stop making decisions, stop balancing cheque books, stop being aggressively punctual.” This met with mixed responses.
I liked the discussion of what it takes to be a hero. I think I agree with this statement in the book: “Heroism isn’t a matter of choice, but of reflex. It’s a property of the central nervous system, not the higher brain.” Heroes do not think; they act.
This is a book well worth reading, even though it does bog down at times. More and more people are now finally talking about what really happened during the Nazi Occupation. For a long time no one wanted to hear about it so the survivors kept quiet. Now their stories are being told – and heard.
I received an advance copy from St. Martin’s Press vis BookBrowse in return of an honest review.
This is a very, very dense scholarly book concerning the women of Paris during WWII. I ended up reading it as a collection of brief episodes as it was difficult to follow any one person’s activities because of the chronological order of events and the various names
There are many French language phrases and words used throughout the book without translation.
You really need a very good working history of France and WWII to understand the enormity of places and events mentioned in passing, ie, the Hiv d’Vel roundup, Ravensbruck medical experiments, the Comet Line and others.
I would not recommend this book to my book group although I did appreciate the work that went into the writing of the book.
3 of 5 stars
So, before writing this review, I also read the several reviews written by others. To be entirely frank, I sometimes wonder if people truly understand how history can be written in many
This book may well be--no, it IS--one of the best written histories of WW2 civilians in my reading experience, if only because it is written in the oft-choppy, always frustrating, chaotic genre of war itself. Although broadly chronological, it sometimes does not read that way. You plunge into the story of a beautiful lady, but are suddenly thrust into the story of a less than beautiful one. I got the feeling Anne Sebba realized how arcane would appear the stories of women who were, well, just women; and so, she seems to have used examples of many, whose names might just be recognized. Yet, the stories of the rich and famous were also the stories of the simple and unsophisticated. It was chaos for all and just like war, you hide behind a wall to avoid the sniper's eye, only to be thrust into the mortar blast which blows out the wall 30 yards behind you; you cannot help but glance back, then back again to insure the wall of your refuge still stands, and then to look to the safety of your children or the one special object you have preserved against the destruction. It is chaos here; destruction there; carnage everywhere.
You see, the stories are told in the same abrupt ways in which life was encountered in wartime Paris, or as the title page sub-title states, "How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation." They lived; sometimes just barely. They loved; sometimes messily but more often, bitterly and at a distance. And, they died...always messily; rarely quickly and with antiseptic cleanliness. Sometimes I found myself putting down the book to let the helter-skelterness (if that's not a word, it should be) of the wartime experience sink in; betimes also, with a tear welling in the eyes
Some reviewers seem frustrated in their reading of the tome, but the contradictions which are inherent in wartime survival were well-written by Anne Sebba to show the confusion, inequity, injustice, and raging chaos. Concerning the women of Paris, almost universally perceived in the world as scions of fashion and modernity, it cannot be told in a different way. Indeed, there's just no other way to accurately tell the broad story of wartime survival--or death--in Paris, especially with such a clear focal point of les parisiennes. Furthermore, I opine, to attempt to tell the broader story simply misses the point of telling the story at all.
One thing really screams in this book: The profound resiliency of the women who bore the brunt of wartime hostility. I really appreciate Sebba's obsessive attention to that story; it is a story which is too often neglected in favor of the experiences of armies and soldiers, campaigns and consequences, allies and enemies, farmers and merchants, businesses and economies, heroes and (even) heroines. Yet, I would challenge the reader to find even one similar account (and I do not write that lightly; in assessing my own experience of a dozen or more books written from or concerning the female experience of war--and several dozen more general accounts--I cannot think of a single one which targets what Sebba so skillfully documents.
One final point: Three sections of plates (images) profoundly enhance the text. How Sebba accomplished the gargantuan task of sorting through tens of thousands of wartime photos to create the carefully curated sections may never be fully appreciated; and I have to tell you, the final sheet of twelve of "Today's Witnesses" is particularly sobering.
But, before I go, I must also mention the copious endnotes on the text (by chapter, thankfully), extensive bibliography, annotations on the illustrations, carefully constructed index (also including the illustrations), and even a cast of characters (just in case you get lost along the way, as you most certainly will).
A superb job. Highly recommended, but mark my words: It ain't an easy read. You will weep, but you will learn.
Thanks to LT for sending me this book for an honest review.
PERFECT MUST for college courses.....my only critique is that i had to get accustomed to the leaping of one person to another in quick succession. Hence 4.5 STARS.
ps- PHOTOS made names come to life!
Food got scarcer, clothing got drabber. A few Parisiennes always had enough to eat and enough to wear; the usual explanation was “relatives in the country”, and sometimes that was true – but in other cases the method of goods acquisition was “horizontal collaboration”. The real changes began in 1942; on 16-17 July, Vichy French police rounded up 13000+ Jews, and held them without food, water, or sanitation until they could be loaded into boxcars for shipment to Auschwitz. Many of the Jews of Paris had wishfully assumed that only “foreign” Jews – people who had escaped from Germany or Czechoslovakia or Poland – would be deported; they were disabused.
French women fought back, by whatever means they could; one of author Anne Sebba’s subjects was ashamed that all she had managed to do was tear down a swastika flag; others were not around to be interviewed because they had ended up in Ravensbrück, Mauthausen or Dachau. The 1943 was especially catastrophic; the British Special Operations Executive had recruited a number of female agents to be parachuted into France and radio back information on troop movements, train traffic, and anything else of interest. Unfortunately, the network was compromised almost as soon as it was set up, and each new agent was met in the drop zone by GESTAPO rather than resistance fighters. Sebba has some criticism for the SOE here, essentially (although not explicitly) accusing them of “affirmative action”. An especially sad case was Noor Inayat Khan, who was a half Indian, half American children’s author. Her trainers were uncomfortable, finding her dreamy, uncertain about parachutes, afraid of weapons, and tending to write down things she should have memorized; Sebba discretely suggests Inayat Khan’s exotic beauty may have allowed her to influence her male handlers into sending her on a mission when she was clearly still unqualified. She was arrested fairly quickly after landing in France, but gave no information to her captors; however, her written notes were recovered. She fought so hard that she was ordered to permanently chained and manacled; in 1944 she and three other female prisoners were “given the full treatment” in their cells in Dachau and shot the next morning. She was awarded the George Cross in 1949.
At the other extreme was Violette Morris; Morris was a former race-car driver, flagrantly lesbian – to the extent of have her breasts surgically removed – and an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator, acting as a chauffeur for German officers and implicated in the arrest of several SOE agents and Resistance fighters. Morris was eventually ambushed in her car by Resistance, along with two other collaborators; unfortunately, four collaborator’s children were killed as well.
Paris eventually got liberated. Sebba notes that “collaborationist” women were rounded up, had their heads shaved, and were marched naked through the streets. Collaborationist men – including the Vichy police who rounded up Jews – went back to their jobs. She doesn’t have much use for Charles DeGaulle, noting that he spun the story to make it seem that France liberated herself; she also doesn’t have too much use for Americans, suggesting that American soldiers viewed Paris as “one tremendous brothel”; some American officers concurred, commenting that expecting soldiers to remain chaste was like “expecting a man to eat carrots in a steakhouse”. The STD situation was actually much worse after American liberation than after German occupation; the Germans had methodically put the brothels under military control and saw to it that the girls were medically examined; under the Americans things were much more chaotic. Sebba’s account ends more with a whimper than a bang; the last of the collaborators are tracked down, the Americans go home, and Paris goes back to being Paris.
The main flaw I see is too much data. Sebba tries to tell every story, collaborator or Jew or Resistance or just survivor. I was overwhelmed trying to keep track of all the names. Still, there are a lot of stories to be told and I’m not sure what could or should be cut; I suspect it might have be best to make this into several books. Recommended nevertheless.