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. Lewis, Roger (2 September 2011). "That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anne Sebba". Daily Telegraph. London. Since working as a correspondent for Reuters, [3] Sebba has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, Times Higher Education Supplement and The Independent. [4] She has been cited as an authority on biography. [5] Stanford, Peter (15 August 2004). "The Exiled Collector by Anne Sebba". London. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022 . Retrieved 26 September 2009. 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.

Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba | Waterstones

It begins in 1939 when the City becomes aware of the German threat but during the lull when the Germans are gracious and cultured and polite. Soon things begin to change and the food shortages begin and Jews are rounded up and made to wear yellow stars, Jewish companies are aranized and their owners flee or to into hiding. Many French men have already gone to unoccupied France to fight in DeGualle's army, what few are left are gathered up and sent to work in Germany for the war effort. That’s not to say that such romances between German officers and French women didn’t happen. Sebba’s book does detail some of those relationships, though how many of them occurred between a woman resistance member and the man she was spying on, Sebba doesn’t say. (I do wonder why it is always that pairing in fiction at least).

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I could go on but really, this is a book which deserves to be read for itself. Sebba is alive to the nuances and complexities of the time, and while she strives to remain non-judgmental, is also clear about the fact that everyone had moral choices to be made. Director: Marc Allégret. Screenplay: Marc Allégret, Francis Cosne, Roger Vadim. Cinematography: Armand Thirard Françoise [ edit ] Director: Michel Boisrond. Screenplay: Michel Boisrond, Francis Cosne, Annette Wademant. Cinematography: Henri Alekan. Ella [ edit ] Anne Sebba's history of the German occupation of Paris, seen through the eyes of its women, has much to recommend it. The book is extensively researched, using both primary and secondary sources, and covers the impact of the Paris Occupation by the Nazis from a variety of perspectives: the social and artistic elite, the fashion community, collaborators, Resistance participants, Jews, mothers - in addition to providing lots of contextual information. Their stories are occasionally familiar, appearing in some detail in a number of recent books of history and historical fiction (The Nightingale, The Lilac Girls, The Monuments Men, The Race for Paris, e.g.), but this is a more thorough catalog than those books provide. Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba review – a mother murdered by cold war hysteria". the Guardian. 27 June 2021 . Retrieved 28 June 2021.

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and

What Sebba brings to the the story is an interest in what this meant for women: in 1940 when Paris fell to the Nazis, women had no vote, were not allowed to have bank accounts, were not supposed to have jobs, yet with most of the men either in the army or in prison or escaped overseas with de Gaulle's Free French, much of the burden of everyday living, of caring for children and the elderly, fell to women: 'Paris became a significantly feminized city, and the women had to negotiate on a daily basis with the male occupier'. In 2009, Sebba wrote and presented The Daffodil Maiden on BBC Radio 3. It was an account of the pianist Harriet Cohen, who inspired the composer Arnold Bax when she wore a dress adorned with a single daffodil and became his mistress for the next 40 years. [6] In 2010, she wrote and presented the documentary Who was Joyce Hatto? for BBC Radio 4. Kamm, Oliver (5 June 2021). "Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba review — j'accuse! Ethel Rosenberg was no Dreyfus". The Times . Retrieved 6 June 2021. (subscription required) 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.

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. 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?