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Reviews
Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation by Anne Sebba
florajb2068_hy's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Wonderful Book, informative, very sad, emotional, and quite dark at times.
mjminkowich's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
eleanorgking's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
erinkinloch's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
Incredibly important piece of writing. Women are too often left out of history and this was a book brimming with stories of hundreds of women throughout the war period. It was a bit of a challenge to read, the book lacks a clear structure and the number of women and names can feel overwhelming. However, a very important and necessary read.
ventuslibra's review against another edition
4.0
Didn't finish the whole thing partially due to the fact I had to return it to the library but I got to the end of 1945 so I call it a success, I wasn't really interested in reading the 1946/47 chapters so I call this book finished!
alundeberg's review
3.0
I am having a hard time rating and reviewing Anne Sebba's "Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation". Sebba deserves a 5 for her sheer amount of research and her ability to have so many share their stories with her. There are hundreds of stories told about how Parisian women from all walks of life-- Jewish and non-Jewish, rich to poor-- fared during and after WWII. She delves into discovering why they made the choices they made, either choosing to actively resist, collaborate, or lay low, and the consequences they faced. Ultimately, as is the case when women are the main actors, history is not fair in its judgements.
French women did not receive the right to vote until 1945 and their role in society was as wives and mothers, asking their husbands permission to do anything. Since the majority of young French men were forced into labor camps to help build German war materiel, it was up to the weaker sex to keep up French life. Faced with great hardships under Nazi and Vichy rule, women had to make choices. Many chose to risk their lives and resist anyway they could. Some acts of resistance, like walking out of a restaurant when German soldiers arrived, were small, but many women actively worked to transmit information to the British, sabotage the Germans, and hide Jews and soldiers. Many of these resisters were caught and sent to Ravensbrück, a female concentration camp in eastern Germany. The Nazi occupiers and the Vichy government also rounded up many of the French Jews and sent them to camps, too. Some women actively collaborated with the Germans, and many had no choice to collaborate, as thousands of women gave birth to children with German fathers.
After the war, De Gaulle, who spent the war years leading the resistance from England, and who is in my opinion, an ass, swept in to claim French victory for the men. Disregarding the fact that the majority of the fighting force were POWs in Germany, he claimed that the French men won the war. The women, whose work was instrumental in the Allied invasion at Normandy, in his view, did nothing because they were not capable of being leaders and using guns. The women who were seen as collaborators, regardless if they wanted to collaborate, were publicly shamed by having their heads shaved, Swastikas drawn on their heads, and being beaten and spit upon. When camp survivors began returning to the city, women who had been a part of resistance movements were given more compensation as they were seen as fighters. Jewish women, who were rounded up and sent away, were seen as victims who did nothing for the war and received little to no help or compensation. For both groups, no one wanted to hear their stories of the horror they faced in the camps; the war was over, time to be happy. It was not until fairly recently that people have been interested to hear their stories. Sebba tells all of these women's stories and more.
In order to tell a multitude of experiences, a writer needs to have a structure to best facilitate the telling. Here is what the book lacked, and it is why I gave it 3 stars and why I will play Monday-morning quarterback. Each chapter represents a year of the war and is about forty pages long. Within the chapters, all of the information is just one long string of text with few clear transitions between one story and the next. The reader is expected to remember who everyone is, and since half the women seemed to be named Germaine, it is more than challenging. After having had to reread passages to figure out who I was reading about, I stopped trying to remember who was who. I would have preferred that Sebba selected a few women to focus, developed their stories more fully, used some of the other women's experiences as support, and have had delineated sections within the chapters for each one. I can understand the impulse to want to share everyone's story, but the number was just overwhelming, which, I know, is the point of this book. Women's stories are unheard.
French women did not receive the right to vote until 1945 and their role in society was as wives and mothers, asking their husbands permission to do anything. Since the majority of young French men were forced into labor camps to help build German war materiel, it was up to the weaker sex to keep up French life. Faced with great hardships under Nazi and Vichy rule, women had to make choices. Many chose to risk their lives and resist anyway they could. Some acts of resistance, like walking out of a restaurant when German soldiers arrived, were small, but many women actively worked to transmit information to the British, sabotage the Germans, and hide Jews and soldiers. Many of these resisters were caught and sent to Ravensbrück, a female concentration camp in eastern Germany. The Nazi occupiers and the Vichy government also rounded up many of the French Jews and sent them to camps, too. Some women actively collaborated with the Germans, and many had no choice to collaborate, as thousands of women gave birth to children with German fathers.
After the war, De Gaulle, who spent the war years leading the resistance from England, and who is in my opinion, an ass, swept in to claim French victory for the men. Disregarding the fact that the majority of the fighting force were POWs in Germany, he claimed that the French men won the war. The women, whose work was instrumental in the Allied invasion at Normandy, in his view, did nothing because they were not capable of being leaders and using guns. The women who were seen as collaborators, regardless if they wanted to collaborate, were publicly shamed by having their heads shaved, Swastikas drawn on their heads, and being beaten and spit upon. When camp survivors began returning to the city, women who had been a part of resistance movements were given more compensation as they were seen as fighters. Jewish women, who were rounded up and sent away, were seen as victims who did nothing for the war and received little to no help or compensation. For both groups, no one wanted to hear their stories of the horror they faced in the camps; the war was over, time to be happy. It was not until fairly recently that people have been interested to hear their stories. Sebba tells all of these women's stories and more.
In order to tell a multitude of experiences, a writer needs to have a structure to best facilitate the telling. Here is what the book lacked, and it is why I gave it 3 stars and why I will play Monday-morning quarterback. Each chapter represents a year of the war and is about forty pages long. Within the chapters, all of the information is just one long string of text with few clear transitions between one story and the next. The reader is expected to remember who everyone is, and since half the women seemed to be named Germaine, it is more than challenging. After having had to reread passages to figure out who I was reading about, I stopped trying to remember who was who. I would have preferred that Sebba selected a few women to focus, developed their stories more fully, used some of the other women's experiences as support, and have had delineated sections within the chapters for each one. I can understand the impulse to want to share everyone's story, but the number was just overwhelming, which, I know, is the point of this book. Women's stories are unheard.