Les Parisiennes: how the women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s

by Anne Sebba

Paperback, 2017

Status

Available

Call number

305.40944

Collection

Publication

London : W&N, 2017.

Description

"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)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Lewie
This work would be excellent for a Women's Study Class, a class of World War II, French History or Spies. It is a history and biography of women in Paris and the surrounding area of France during the 1940's it not only covers events leading up to the Fall of Paris but the events that occurred
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during the entire 1940's era.The work shows not only ordinary everyday Parisiennes but from the top social classes to the lowest classes both Gentile and Jew. The work explains how these women survived the events of World War II that turned their lives upside down and gives details of how they survived and how they died with honor. It also shows the good and bad sides of human nature in the results of the occupation of Paris and how the many different groups each working for their own cause survived. Paris fashions are explained and cultural trends and artistic movements shown, it is based on the gathered stories of the women involved, but it reads like a spy novel. It is hard to put down once you start reading it, it is full of emotion and the drama of war. If the reader is a student of history or of life this work will give you a view inside Paris from the late 1930's until the early 1950's. The cast list is a who's who of the social and fashion world and gives the reader a new incite to how many well known artists, singers, dancers, and socialites lived and survived the Nazi occupation of Paris. Even those who like Romance Novels will find this work a book hard to put down and it is not fiction but fact too.
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LibraryThing member BettyTaylor56
I was looking forward to reading this book. I read Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale” which piqued my interest in how the women in France survived Nazi occupation. I also read CW Gortner’s “Mademoiselle Chanel” which had a lot of information on how she and others like her survived.

This
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nonfiction book was well researched for the period 1939 – 1949. The majority of the book addresses the lives of “the rich and the famous” and, I admit, I scanned much of those sections. I was more interested in the everyday people, people like me. I also was not impressed with how much fashion – and entertainment to some degree - continued to be of prime importance during that time. Seems a bit shallow to me when people were just trying to survive.

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.
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LibraryThing member beckyhaase
LES PARISIENNES by Anne Sebba
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
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used by the women during the course of the war. The “Cast list” was almost useless as women were listed under their family name, or their husband’s name, or their resistance name, etc, but not all of them.
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
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LibraryThing member jlafleur
Les Parisiennes is a missed opportunity - I really wanted to cherish these stories based on the travails suffered by Parisian women during WW II and the occupation. Rather than creating a compelling narrative, this heavily researched book reads a bit like the author's unedited notes. Major sections
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end abruptly without context (just like that). It's difficult to truly appreciate these stories when they are presented in a cursory and somewhat disjointed manner. I could have easily given four or even five stars for the content, but it is so sad to see such excellent research and obvious passion for the subject squandered by lack of compelling narrative and poor editing choices. The text does not so much suggest a movie screenplay starring Bergman and Bogart; it reads like a series of many short wartime Movietone newsreels.
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LibraryThing member Big_Bang_Gorilla
This doorstop, which purports to describe the life of Parisian women during the German occupation in WWII, pretty much boils down to a minute examination of the workings of the fashion industry during that time, interspersed with vignettes describing Holocaust victims and derring-do by the French
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resistance. Personally, I would have much preferred an Everywoman account; civilian life by woman who were not in one of the author's favored groups are barely touched upon, and the anecdotes from these groups, already trite (and, in the case of the fashion industry, trivial), quickly become repetitive as well. Moreover, as uninteresting as most of these women are, the tangents she follows in telling their stories are even less interesting, introducing genealogical trivialities and connections to events which occurred anywhere from the mid-nineteenth century until the 2010's, making the book scattershot and introducing an impossibly large cast of characters. And to pad out an already long book, the author extends her story past Liberation, past V-E Day, and into the early fifties. This book is a waste of time except for Holocaust specialists, Alistair MacLean fans, and fashionistas.
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LibraryThing member rpbell
I received this book from a friend, another history buff, who said, "I hope you like it. I didn't." I loved it.

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
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ways. I ~loved~ this book for precisely the reasons others rated it with fewer stars. I blanched at the three star ratings, but my mouth dropped open with the rating of two stars (was the book even read?).

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.
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LibraryThing member croknot1
Hard to read, with all the names of famous French people. Also very long. Also worth the effort.
Thanks to LT for sending me this book for an honest review.
LibraryThing member kristincedar
It's a heavy read. The amount of research that went into this work is outstanding but overwhelming to the reader. Great "history you're never heard of" but you lose a bit of interest in learning about people that aren't household names. I'd like it a little bit more if it less.
LibraryThing member linda.marsheells
Whew.....such an amazing book! Anne Sebba meticulously researched and wrote about a piece of history that we are all aware of, but she dug in deeper than anyone else ever has. Nazi Paris, and the role of women changed drastically. The seen but not heard housewife is a thing of the past, and females
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are at the forefront of fighting not only for their own lives but those of families and friends also. Nationality....social strata....finances....none of it mattered. A book that reaches into your soul and firmly implants itself, Les Parisiennes is a must-read for someone looking for a new view into an old subject.
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!
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LibraryThing member setnahkt
Tragic in spots, inspiring in others, but perhaps a little bit too encyclopedic. France’s defeat came as an immense shock to her civilians; one day her soldiers were fighting bravely at the front; the next a German band was marching through the Arc de Triomphe. A few Parisiennes walked out when
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someone in Feldgrau entered a shop or café, but most regarded the occupiers with speculative curiosity. They were healthy, blonde, “Wagnerian” according to one lady. After all, French men were all away – perhaps POWs – and the Parisiennes had a reputation to maintain. The occupiers, in turn, were initially polite, and perhaps a little naïve and intimidated. Of course, that changed.

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.
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LibraryThing member catzkc
4.5 stars. I learned about this book on a podcast - the May 26 2016 episode of Don Snow's History Hit (check it out!). The book is such an interesting history of the German occupation of Paris during WWII. I had expected something more biographical - a collection of individual stories. But this is
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presented chronologically, and offers a great deal more of the social and cultural history of this place and time. I was surprised to find that I was just as interested, if not more, in the chapters that covered the war aftermath. Because of it's chronological organization, it can be hard to keep track of the people and their stories throughout the book, thus my marking it down a half a star. But I was quite pleased that the history covered here was so comprehensive, much more than I expected.
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LibraryThing member PattyLee
This covers two topics I am acutely interested in- WW II and France. Yet, for all of that, at times it was a bit of a slog. Why? Too many stories, too many characters and no real through line at the outset. The focus is on a number of Parisian women, mostly famous or well-known or well connected,
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but others not so much, who attempt to survive the occupation of Paris and German reprisals for any and everything. Some were real collaborators, some were social compatriots of the Germans, some were members of the resistance. Mostly, the comfortable and rich were not members of the resistance, but some were. Before the war, many rich French families were intermarriages of the aristocracy and the Jewish artistic and intellectual community. Their differing responses to the German threat was both compelling and heartbreaking. I liked that the focus was on the women, many of whom consorted with the enemy to feed their children; gave their children away to protect them; learned to lie and kill to resist and aid the allies. On the other hand, others (the rich) just wanted to keep on with their previous lifestyles. The problem is the book seems all threads, jumping between characters, place, events and this was frustrating. Too late, I discovered the name reference in the back of the book! Duh. It helps.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2016

Physical description

496 p.; 5.24 inches

ISBN

1780226616 / 9781780226613
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