Newburyport Public Library

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

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

contains biographical information

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Les Parisiennes

bibliography

932576483

Anne Sebba

how the women of Paris lived, loved, and died under 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."--Dust jacket

Prologue: Les Parisiennes -- Part one: War. 1939 : Paris on the edge ; 1940 : Paris abandoned ; 1941 : Paris divided ; 1942 : Paris ravaged ; 1943: Paris trembles ; 1944 (January-June) : Paris awaits -- Part two: Liberation. 1944 (June-December) : Paris shorn ; 1945 : Paris returns ; 1946 : Paris adjusts -- Part three: Reconstruction. 1947 : Paris looks newish ; 1948-1949 : Paris Americanized -- Epilogue: Peacetime Paris