Les Parisiennes : how the women of Paris lived, loved, and died under Nazi occupation

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"Anne Sebba has the nearly miraculous gift of combining the vivid intimacy of the lives of women during The Occupation with the history of the time. This is a remarkable book." --Edmund de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes

New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba explores a devastating period in Paris's history and tells the stories of how women survived--or didn't--during the Nazi occupation.

Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.

When the Nazis and the puppet Vichy regime began rounding up Jews to ship east to concentration camps, the full horror of the war was brought home and the choice between collaboration and resistance became unavoidable. Sebba focuses on the role of women, many of whom faced life and death decisions every day. After the war ended, there would be a fierce settling of accounts between those who made peace with or, worse, helped the occupiers and those who fought the Nazis in any way they could.

Author Notes

ANNE SEBBA is a biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written several books and is a member of the Society of Authors Executive Committee. She lives in London.

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Sebba (That Woman), a former Reuters foreign correspondent, burrows into the lives of women in the City of Light during WWII to reveal their captivating and complicated stories. Rather than simply presenting the women as collaborators or resisters, Sebba shows the impossible choices they faced, which hardly seemed like choices at all. This is the book's heart, and it pulsates from start to finish. That focus is slightly marred by Sebba's broad interpretation of "Parisiennes." She uses it to describe women who lived in the city, including French citizens and noncitizens alike, and those who didn't spend the entire war within the confines of the city. It's logical to include noncitizens such as Irène Némirovsky and Noor Inayat Khan, who'd both lived in France for about 20 years before the war started. But passages on the "Grey Mice"-German women who came to work in Paris during the war-belong in another book. While extending the story outside of Paris allows Sebba more range in discussing the dangers of Resistance work and the devastating deportations, it blurs what could have been an incisive, powerful portrait of an imperiled city. Sebba's clear-eyed narrative concludes, correctly, that these women deserve understanding, not judgment. Photos. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Guardian Review

From female soldiers insulted by men to the prostitutes who heroically sheltered airmen -- a reminder that half the story of the second world war remains untold One of the greatest scenes from the hit French television series Un Village Francais, a chronicle of the second world war viewed from a village in the Jura mountains, involves the execution by firing squad of the local Milice francaise, the paramilitary group created by Vichy to combat the resistance. The militia, hands tied behind their back, facing down the enemy, launch into a final rendition of their song, and the ragtag bunch that make up the firing squad balk at shooting men who are singing. Suzanne, the postmistress-turned-resistance fighter, grabs a rifle and takes aim. "Not a woman!" the militia leader shouts. "We have the right to die like men!" Suzanne yells back: "When you had to kill them, you didn't care if they were women! The women of the resistance have a message for you! On my command: Fire!" I thought of this scene reading Les Parisiennes, which considers the impact of the war on the lives of Parisian women. Anne Sebba's book is filled with examples of how male soldiers could not abide the idea of a woman in power. She recalls a moment from Marguerite Duras's wartime notebooks, just after the war had ended, in which a woman in uniform confronted a returning soldier: "So my friend -- we're not saluting? Can't you see I'm a captain," she said. The soldier looked at her. "Me, when I see a skirt, I don't salute her, I fuck her." Vichy asked women to do nothing less than to save the soul of France by building families. In addition, or instead, they helped men escape, hid Jews, and joined the resistance. They also lived their everyday lives, staining their legs with iodine when they couldn't afford stockings. "Our role was to put on the costume," wrote the actor Corinne Luchaire, who was later sentenced to 10 years of degradation nationale for " collaboration horizontale ". The book takes an unflinching and sympathetic look at the roles women were asked to play in the war, and those they wrote for themselves. We meet women such as Jeanne Bucher, a gallerist in her 60s who hid resistants in the attic along with her paintings by Braque and Picasso, or Lise London, who organised an uprising on the Rue Daguerre. Then there are more familiar names such as the Jewish novelist Irene Nemirovsky, who converted to Catholicism and even published in collaborationist newspapers, but was still deported to Auschwitz. The women referred to most often tend to be from the middle or upper class; you suspect they were the ones with the networks and the resources to leave behind testimonials. Sebba notes that, for instance, those who worked as prostitutes during the war "wrote no memoirs, were not part of the resistance, and so, in spite of being responsible for several courageous acts during the occupation, such as sheltering airmen in brothels as well as undertaking individual acts of great kindness in the [Ravensbruck] camp, have largely been forgotten by history". Why did these women decide to risk their lives in situations where many people would be tempted to stay out of trouble? Sebba interviewed many of the surviving women, and tells their stories here, many for the first time. Why did they decide to risk their lives, she asked them, in situations where many people would be tempted to stay out of trouble? "I don't even understand the question," answered Jeannie Rousseau, a member of the Druids resistance network, who provided key military information on the Germans' rocket programme to the British. "It was a moral obligation to do what you are capable of doing. As a woman you could not join the army but you could use your brain." Quite early on, however, it becomes apparent that Les Parisiennes suffers from its ambition, as the women the book is meant to celebrate get lost in a melee of facts about, and descriptions of, wartime Paris. The book proceeds year by year, and individual stories disappear, to be picked up again a few chapters later. After the Lise London incident in the Rue Daguerre, for instance, we are told she was sent to Ravensbruck and her husband to Mauthausen. By the time she resurfaces, 260 pages later, it's hard to remember who she is. This confusion seems to have been anticipated, as the book features a glossary of names and an index. But I wish Sebba had chosen instead to focus on a few figures, and, through them, get at the larger issues. Les Parisiennes insists on the moral incertitude of wartime, "especially through the eyes of women". Perhaps because their lives were so complicated and roles so divided, they were more able to perceive, and be at home with, ambiguity. Reading the past through the eyes of the women who lived it is an act of feminist historiography, but Sebba's approach is conventional, and too reminiscent of big history books written by blokes, even as it celebrates the women who have too long escaped their notice. A feminist writing of history needs to radically challenge modes such as chronology and dutiful scene-setting. These are desperate, devastating stories, but this format does them no favours. Reading Les Parisiennes, I am nonetheless filled with admiration not only for the women themselves, but for Sebba's heroic research, for her meticulous tracking of these people and their exploits, of their fragility and their strength. This book is an important reminder of the fact that fully half of the story of the second world war is buried in memory and the archive, and has only recently been unearthed. - Lauren Elkin.

Kirkus Review

An extensively researched cultural history of Paris from 1939 to 1949, covering events leading to the fall of Paris, its occupation by the Nazis, and the early postwar years.Journalist Sebba (That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, 2012, etc.), a former Reuters foreign correspondent, pored over memoirs, diaries, and letters, read books, watched films, handled artifacts, and interviewed women who lived through the events to understand how the war changed the lives of Parisiennes and how they adjusted to loss, fear, and hunger under occupation. Women were forced to make difficult choices, and the author convincingly demonstrates that this was a complicated business, that their options were limited as they struggled to live alongside their male Nazi occupiers and care for their families in the absence of men, many of whom were serving overseas or were prisoners of war. The stories show the good and bad sides of human nature as women resisted, suffered, and died or collaborated and flourished. In postwar Paris, female collaborators were publicly shamed, but the work of women resistors often went unrecognized because they were not part of an official organization. Sebba brings their stories to light and also highlights women who made less-than-honorable compromises. She seems to have a fondness for the socially prominent, making her vulnerable to the charge of name-dropping, and she gratuitously brings in big names in the fashion worlde.g., Christian Dior gets space because his sister was a member of the resistance. Since the book is divided into chapters that cover one year, individuals whose stories begin in an early year may not appear again for several years, making their narratives hard to follow. The back-of-the book list of the cast of characters is an essential guide for befuddled readers. Despite the gossipy bits, the research is impressive, and Sebba offers balance to the plethora of war histories featuring the roles of men. The book has ample material for lively discussion in womens studies classes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Former Reuters correspondent and biographer, most notably of Wallis Simpson (That Woman, 2012), turns in a fascinating account of how the buildup to WWII, the war itself, and its aftermath marked the lives of Parisian women. Her organizing principle, as stated in the prologue, is choice. While recognizing that women sometimes had no choice, Sebba presents the myriad everyday and moral decisions that French women made, sometimes with flair, sometimes with heroism or with treachery, and often with anguish. Sebba conducted a series of interviews with surviving Frenchwomen, drawing as well from memoirs, diaries, letters, and popular magazines of the time. She studied artifacts of the era as well; for example, she writes about viewing cork- and wooden-soled shoes, which made a unique clacking sound during the Occupation. Her interviews, while riveting, often come abruptly into the text without enough introduction. It's the details that will stay with the reader, like the bottles of Napoleon brandy one French family carried in the trunk of their car during l'Exode from Paris to the south; the setting of French time one hour earlier to match German time as soon as the Occupation began; and the fact that women stood in line for an average of four hours a day to obtain food, while the German soldiers stationed in Paris spent six-and-a-half-million francs on opera tickets during the Occupation. A standout social history.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2016 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Residing in Paris during World War II meant living a life of fear. Under the Nazi regime, people were forced to make life or death decisions every day. Sebba (American Jennie) investigates a population rarely examined when discussing the City of Light in the 1940s: women. The narrative incorporates women from all walks of life: rich and poor, collaborators and resistors, Jewish wives and mothers along with those who offered them safety. In fact, the author mentions so many individuals that it can be difficult to keep track of the names, but the further readers delve into the book, the more they'll become entranced. The women of this period accomplished a lot, not only resisting Nazi influence but also keeping some semblance of normalcy in the household and among family and friends. Sebba proves that those who risked everything were never quite honored properly, taking on the task of paying respect to the lives of the Parisiennes who sacrificed for their city and the people they loved. VERDICT Despite its lengthy cast of characters, Sebba's work delivers an intriguing perspective of an overlooked group during a time when all were tested beyond their limits. Paris history buffs will enjoy a new look at the city during World War II. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/16.]-Rebecca -Kluberdanz, New York P.L. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Prologue: Les Parisiennes	p. xiii
Part 1 War
1 1939: Paris on the Edge	p. 3
2 1940: Paris Abandoned	p. 35
3 1941: Paris Divided	p. 71
4 1942: Paris Ravaged in
5 1943: Paris Trembles	p. 153
6 1944 (January-June): Paris Awaits	p. 193
Part 2 Liberation
7 1944 (June-December): Paris Shorn	p. 223
8 1945: Paris Returns	p. 243
9 1946: Paris Adjusts	p. 283
Part 3 Reconstruction
10 1947: Paris Looks Newish	p. 317
11 1948-1949: Paris Americanized	p. 339
Epilogue: Peacetime Paris	p. 363
Notes	p. 368
Bibliography	p. 411
Cast	p. 423
Acknowledgements	p. 429
List of Illustrations	p. 432
Index	p. 436

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