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

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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. 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. Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba review – a mother murdered by cold war hysteria". the Guardian. 27 June 2021 . Retrieved 28 June 2021.

In many ways, Sebba’s book is important because it balances the women on the sidelines stories that seem to be so much of popular and easily accessible World War II history. It’s true that there are several books about the role of women in the British SOE, but it wasn’t until this year that WW II woman pilots (WASPS) could legally be buried at Arlington. Usually, there are a few general statements, books about women rescuers of Jewish civilians, and information about nurses. You really have to look to find books about women, and finding books in English about French resistance woman fighters is especially hard in some cases. So we do need books about this. In the past few years, it seems that the role of women in war is getting more attention and study, at least in popular culture. Hopefully, Hollywood will catch up and instead of the fictional Charlotte Grey we will have a lavish movie about the real Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who also went by the name Hedgehog. Maybe instead of a one hour program on PBS Noor Khan will finally get her own Hollywood movie. Maybe in additional to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, HBO will finally have a series about women resistance fighters – and not the by now tried and tired cliché of the woman falling in love with the German officer she is suppose to be spying on. Don’t give me that. Give me Virginia Hall and Cuthbert. Please, please, someone do that. Anne Sebba ( née Rubinstein) was born in London on 31 December 1951. She read history at King's College London (1969–72) and, after a brief spell at the BBC World Service in Bush House, joined Reuters as a graduate trainee, working in London and Rome, from 1972 to 1978. She wrote her first book while living in New York City and now lives in London.

So, we go through 1940, when Paris was abandoned as many took a desperate, terrifying flight across France. However, when the German army arrived, they were often well-dressed, amiable and polite – at least at first and to most of the city’s inhabitants… People began to return, but gradually resistance groups emerged. There are arrests, denunciations, betrayal, fear, solidarity and every possible emotion through the war years. Always there is danger and hunger, but still Parisian women remade their dresses, put wooden soles on their shoes and pounced on parachute silk to make clothes.

In 2016, Sebba published Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s (Weidenfeld & Nicolson UK), published in the United States as Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under the Nazi Occupation (St Martin's Press). This was described as "fascinating and beautifully written" by The Spectator [19] and was the joint winner of the Franco-British society's book prize for 2016. [20] 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. 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. And yet I have a quibble. In her final sentence, Sebba says of Parisians’ behaviour. “It is not for the rest of us to judge but, with imagination, we can try to understand.” She is right to emphasise that understanding is needed, especially by those who never had to choose. But surely a judgment can and should be made that those who were in the “refusal camp” – as Rousseau put it – must take a higher moral ground than those who “went along with it”. Not to make a judgment is surely to fail to recognise the refuseniks’ special courage.Schillinger, Liesl (9 March 2012). "THAT WOMAN: THE LIFE OF WALLIS SIMPSON, DUCHESS OF WINDSOR". The Washington Times . Retrieved 6 June 2013.