German Occupation Of Paris

Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
attacked Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10, 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14. During the Occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and Paris was governed by the German military and by French officials approved by the Germans. For Parisians, the Occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from nine in the evening until five in the morning; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was imposed from September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce and the prices higher. A million Parisians left the city for the provinces, where there was more food and fewer Germans. The French press and radio contained only German propaganda.

Jews in Paris were forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge, and were barred from certain professions and public places. On 16–17 July 1942, 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children, were rounded up by the French police, on orders of the Germans, and were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first demonstration against the Occupation, by Paris students, took place on 11 November 1940. As the war continued, anti-German clandestine groups and networks were created, some loyal to the French Communist Party, others to General Charles de Gaulle in London. They wrote slogans on walls, organized an underground press, and sometimes attacked German officers. Reprisals by the Germans were swift and harsh.

Following the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the French Resistance in Paris launched an uprising on August 19, seizing the police headquarters and other government buildings. The city was liberated by French and American troops on August 25; the next day, General de Gaulle led a triumphant parade down the Champs-Élysées on August 26, and organized a new government. In the following months, ten thousand Parisians who had collaborated with the Germans were arrested and tried, eight thousand convicted, and 116 executed. On 29 April and 13 May 1945, the first post-war municipal elections were held, in which French women voted for the first time.

Capture

File:French troops barricades2 paris 1940.png, In 1940, the French army built barricades of sandbags on some Paris streets, but they were never used (Frank Capra's film ''Divide and Conquer'', U.S. War Department)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L05487, Paris, Avenue Foch, Siegesparade.jpg, German soldiers of the ''30. Infanterie-Division'' march on Avenue Foch on June 14, 1940 (Bundesarchiv)
File:Adolf Hitler, Eiffel Tower, Paris 23 June 1940.jpg, Adolf Hitler on the terrace of the ''Palais de Chaillot'' on June 23, 1940. To his left is the sculptor Arno Breker, to his right, Albert Speer, his architect (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv N 1576 Bild-007, Paris, Parade deutscher Panzer.jpg, German army parade on ''Champs Élysées'' in Paris, 1940. (Agfacolor)

Defense preparations

In the spring of 1939, war with Germany already seemed inevitable. In Paris, the first defense exercise took place on February 2, and city workers began digging twenty kilometers of trenches in city squares and parks to be used for bomb shelters. On March 10, the city began to distribute gas masks to civilians, and on March 19, signs were posted guiding Parisians to the nearest shelters. On August 23, Parisians were surprised to read that the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Russian minister Vyacheslav Molotov had signed the Hitler-Stalin Pact of non-aggression. ''L'Humanité'', the daily newspaper of the French Communist Party (PCF), welcomed the pact, writing: "At the moment when the Soviet Union makes a new and appreciable contribution to safeguard the peace, constantly threatened by the fascist instigators of war, the French Communist Party addresses its warmest greetings to the country of socialism, to its party and to its great leader Stalin". In Paris, the copies of the newspaper and of the other Communist newspaper, ''Ce Soir'', were seized by the police and their publication suspended. On August 31, anticipating bombardment, the French government began to evacuate 30,000 children out of the city to the ''Province'' (regions outside Paris). That night, the street lights were turned off as a measure against German air raids. On September 1, news reached Paris that Germany had invaded Poland, and France, as expected, promptly declared war on Germany.

Safeguarding national treasures

On August 27, in anticipation of air raids, workmen had begun taking down the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. The same day, curators at the Louvre, summoned back from summer vacation, and aided by packers from the nearby ''La Samaritaine'' and ''Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville'' department stores, began cataloging and packing the major works of art, which were put into crates and labeled only with numbers to disguise their contents. The Winged Victory of Samothrace statue was carefully wheeled down the long stairway on a wooden ramp to be put on a truck for its departure to the Château de Valençay in the Indre department. Trucks used to move scenery for the '' Comédie Française'' were used to move the larger paintings, including Gericault's ''Raft of the Medusa''. The art works were carried in slow convoys of trucks, convoys, with headlights off to observe the blackout, to the ''châteaux'' of the Loire Valley and other designated locations.

The architectural landmarks of the city were protected by sandbags. The French Army waited in the fortifications of the Maginot Line, while in Paris ration cards for gasoline were issued, restrictions were put on the sale of meat and, in February 1940, ration cards for food were issued; however, cafés and theatres remained open.

German invasion

The French defense plan was purely passive, waiting for the Germans to attack. After eight months of relative calm (known as the Phoney War, ''La drôle de guerre'') on the Western Front, the Germans struck France on May 10, 1940, bypassing the Maginot Line and slipping through the Ardennes. By May 15, German panzer divisions were only 35 kilometers from Laon, in the rear of the French and British armies, racing toward the English Channel. On May 28, the British realized the battle was lost and began withdrawing their soldiers from the beaches of Dunkerque automobile factory. 254 persons were killed, including 195 civilians.

French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud dismissed his supreme military commander, Maurice Gamelin, and replaced him with the 73-year-old Maxime Weygand. He also named the 84-year-old Philippe Pétain, a hero of the First World War, as deputy prime minister. Neither Weygand nor Pétain felt the Germans could be defeated, and they began looking for a way out of the war.

Evacuation

On June 8, the sound of distant artillery fire could be heard in the capital. Trains filled with refugees departed ''Gare d'Austerlitz'' with no announced destination. On 10 June, the French government fled Paris, first to Tours and then to Bordeaux. Thousands of Parisians followed their example, filling the roads out of the city with automobiles, tourist buses, trucks, wagons, carts, bicycles, and on foot. The slow-moving river of refugees took ten hours to cover thirty kilometers. Within a few days, the wealthier ''arrondissements'' of the city were nearly deserted, and the population of the working-class 14th arrondissement dropped from 178,000 to 49,000.

Open city

The British General Staff urged the French to defend Paris street-by-street, but Pétain dismissed the idea: "To make Paris into a city of ruins will not affect the issue." On June 12, the French government, in Tours, declared Paris to be an open city, that there would be no resistance. At 5:30 in the morning of June 14, the first German advance guard entered the city at ''Porte de La Villette'' and took the ''rue de Flandres'' toward the center. They were followed by several German columns, which, following an established plan, moved to the principal intersections. German military vehicles with loudspeakers circulated, instructing Parisians not to leave their buildings. At eight in the morning, delegations of German officers arrived at the Invalides, headquarters of the military governor of Paris, Henri Dentz, and at the Prefecture of Police, where the Prefect, Roger Langeron, was waiting. The Germans politely invited the French officials to put themselves at the disposition of the German occupiers. By the end of the afternoon, the Germans had hung a swastika flag at the Arc de Triomphe and organized military parades with a marching band on the ''Champs Élysées'' and ''Avenue Foch'', primarily for the benefit of the German army photographers and newsreel cameramen.

Capitulation

On the evening of June 16, Prime Minister Reynaud resigned. On the morning of June 17, General de Gaulle left Bordeaux by plane for London. At midday, Parisians gathered around radios heard Pétain, the new head of the French government, announce: "It is with a heavy heart that I tell you today that we must cease hostilities. The fighting must stop." Though no armistice had yet been signed, the French army stopped fighting.

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler arrived on June 24 for a rapid tour by car, his only visit to Paris. He was guided by the German sculptor Arno Breker and by his chief architect, Albert Speer, both of whom had lived in Paris. He saw the Opera House and viewed the Eiffel Tower from the terrace of the Palace of Chaillot, paid homage at Napoleon's tomb, and visited the artist's quarter of Montmartre.

Axis occupation

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-247-0775-38, Paris, Straßenszene.jpg, German Luftwaffe soldiers at a Paris café, 1941 (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1985-1216-524, Paris, Wachablösung.jpg, German soldiers ''goose stepping'' at changing of the guard at the ''Hôtel Crillon'' on the ''Place de la Concorde'', October 1940 (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1975-017-08, Paris, Straßenszene.jpg, New signs show way to German headquarters of Greater Paris, 1940 (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-129-0480-25, Paris, deutsche Soldaten vor dem Moulin Rouge.jpg, German soldiers in Montmartre at the ''Moulin Rouge'' (Bundesarchiv)

During the Occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and the flag of Nazi Germany flew over all the French government buildings. Signs in German were placed on the main boulevards, and the clocks of all France were reset to the German time. The German military high command moved into the Majestic Hotel on Avenue Kléber; the ''Abwehr'' (German military intelligence), took over the Hôtel Lutetia; the ''Luftwaffe'' (German Air Force) occupied the Ritz; the ''Kriegsmarine'' (German Navy), the ''Hôtel de la Marine'' on the ''Place de la Concorde''; the ''Carlingue'', the French auxiliary organization of the Gestapo, occupied the building at 93 ''rue Lauriston''; and the German commandant of Paris and his staff moved into the Hôtel Meurice on the ''rue de Rivoli''.

Paris became the primary destination for the rest and recreation of German soldiers. Under the slogan ''"Jeder einmal in Paris"'' ("everyone once in Paris"), each German soldier was promised one visit to Paris. One month after the beginning of the Occupation, a bi-monthly magazine and guide for visiting German soldiers ''Der Deutsche Wegleiter für Paris'' (The German Guide to Paris), was first published by the Paris ''Kommandantur''. Certain hotels and movie theaters were reserved exclusively for German soldiers. A German-language newspaper, the ''Pariser Zeitung'' (1941-1944), was also published for the soldiers. The German officers enjoyed the ''Ritz'', ''Maxim's'', the ''Coupole'' and other exclusive restaurants, as the exchange rate was fixed to favor the German occupiers. Many houses of prostitution existed in Paris and they began to cater to German clients.

The headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst, the counter-intelligence branch of the SS was at 84 Avenue Foch. French auxiliaries, who worked for the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst and Geheime Feldpolizei were based at 93, ''rue Lauriston'' in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. They were known as the Carlingue (or French Gestapo) and were active between 1941 and 1944. The group was founded by Pierre Bonny, a corrupt ex-policeman. It was subsequently led by Henri Lafont and Pierre Loutrel, two professional criminals who had been active in the French underworld before the war.

Life in occupied Paris

Civilian population

By the time that the Germans arrived in Paris, two-thirds of the Parisians, particularly those in the wealthier neighborhoods, had fled to the countryside and the south of France, in what is known as the ''exode de 1940'', the massive exodus of millions of people from the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the north and east of France, fleeing after the German victory of the battle of Sedan (12–15 May 1940). Once the Occupation had begun, they started to return. By July 7, the city government estimated the population had risen again to 1.5 million; it climbed to two million by October 22, and 2.5 million by January 1, 1941. At the beginning of 1943, it fell again, because of air raids by the Allies, the arrest and deportation of Jews and foreigners, and the forced departure to factories in Germany of many young Frenchmen, as part of the ''Service du travail obligatoire'' (STO), "Obligatory Work Service".

The attitude of the Parisians toward the occupiers varied greatly. Some saw the Germans as an easy source of money; others, as the Prefect of the Seine, Roger Langeron (arrested on 23 June 1940), commented, "looked at them as if they were invisible or transparent." The attitude of members of the French Communist Party was more complicated; the Party had long denounced Nazism and Fascism, but after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939, had to reverse direction. The editors of the Communist Party newspaper, ''L'Humanité'', which had been closed down by the French government, asked the Germans for permission to resume publishing, and it was granted. The Party also asked that workers resume work in the armaments factories, which were now producing for the Germans. Many individual communists opposed the Nazis, but the ambivalent official attitude of the Party lasted until Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Ukrainian-Jewish Marxist historian, Maximilien Rubel, was living semi-secretly in Paris, and was astonished by the level of ignorance shown by Marxist members of the resistance that he met, and in consequence he introduced the term " Marxologie" to refer to a systematic scholarly approach to the understanding of Marx and Marxism, which he perceived to be needed.

For the Parisians, the Occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from nine in the evening until five in the morning; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was imposed from September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce and the prices higher. The French press and radio broadcast only German propaganda.

The beginning of the STO, the program that required large number of young Frenchmen to work in factories for the German war industry, in exchange for the return of older and sick French prisoners of war in Germany, greatly increased the resentment of the French population against the Germans. Most Parisians, however, only expressed their anger and frustrations in private, while the police of Paris, under German control, received every day hundreds of anonymous denunciations by Parisians against other Parisians.

Rationing and the Black Market

File:Paris, Spring 1945- Everyday Life in Liberated Paris, France, 1945 D24161.jpg, Line outside a Paris bakery in spring 1945. The liberation did not end the food shortages. (Imperial War Museums, U.K.)
File:Paris, Spring 1945- Everyday Life in Liberated Paris, France, 1945 D24174.jpg, Potatoes and leeks on sale in a Paris market. There was little else to buy. Spring 1945 (Imperial War Museums, U.K.)

Finding food soon became the first preoccupation of the Parisians. The authorities of the German occupation transformed French industry and agriculture into a machine for serving Germany. Shipments to Germany had first priority; what was left went to Paris and the rest of France. All of the trucks manufactured at the Citroen factory went directly to Germany. (Later many of these trucks were cleverly sabotaged by the French workers, who recalibrated the dip sticks so that the trucks would run out of oil without notice). The greatest share of shipments of meat, wheat, milk produce and other agricultural products also went to Germany. What remained for the Parisians was strictly rationed, following the creation on 16 June 1940 of the ''Ministère de l'agriculture et du ravitaillement'' (Ministry of Agriculture and Supply), which began to impose a system rationing as early as 2 August 1940, as per ''Décret du 30 juillet 1940'': bread, fat, flour products, rice, sugar; then, on 23 October 1940: butter, cheese, meat, coffee, ''charcuterie'', eggs, oil; in July 1941: and as the war went on: chocolate, fish, dried vegetables, (like peas and beans), potatoes, fresh vegetables, wine, tobacco... Products could be bought only upon presentation of coupons attributed to specific items and on the specific week in which they could be used. Parisians (and all the population of France) were divided into seven categories depending upon their age, and allotted a certain amount of each product each month. A new bureaucracy, employing more than nine thousand city employees, with offices at all schools and the city hall of each ''arrondissement'', was put into place to administer the program. The system resulted in long lines and frustrated hopes, since promised products often never appeared. Thousands of Parisians regularly made the long journey by bicycle to the countryside, hoping to come back, with vegetables, fruit, eggs and other farm products.

The rationing system also applied to clothing: leather was reserved exclusively for German army boots, and vanished completely from the market. Leather shoes were replaced by shoes made of rubber or canvas (raffia) with wooden soles. A variety of ''ersatz'' or substitute products appeared, which were not exactly what they were called: ''ersatz'' wine, coffee (made with chicory), tobacco and soap.

Finding coal for heat in winter was another preoccupation. The Germans had transferred the authority over the coal mines of northern France from Paris to their military headquarters in Brussels. The priority for the coal that did arrive in Paris was for the use in factories. Even with ration cards, adequate coal for heating was almost impossible to find. Supplies for normal heating needs were not restored until 1949.

Paris restaurants were open but had to deal with strict regulations and shortages. Meat could only be served on certain days, and certain products, such as cream, coffee and fresh produce were extremely rare. Nonetheless, the restaurants found ways to serve their regular clients. The historian René Héron de Villefosse, who lived in Paris throughout the war, described his experience: "The great restaurants were only allowed to serve, under the fierce eye of a frequent control, noodles with water, turnips and beets, in exchange for certain number of tickets, but the hunt for a good meal continued for many food-lovers. For five hundred francs one could conquer a good pork chop, hidden under cabbage and served without the necessary tickets, along with a liter of Beaujolais and a real coffee; sometimes it was on the first floor at rue Dauphine, where you could listen to the BBC while sitting next to Picasso."

The restrictions and shortage of goods led to the existence of a thriving black market. Producers and distributors of food and other scarce products set aside a portion of their goods for the black market, and used middle-men to sell them to customers. The bars of the Champs-Élysées, and other parts of Paris, became common meeting places between the middle-men and clients. Parisians bought cigarettes, meat, coffee, wine and other products which frequently neither the middle-man nor the customer had ever seen.

Transport

File:Parisian Traffic, Spring 1945- Everyday Life in Paris, France, 1945 D24162.jpg, A car converted to run on coal gas instead of gasoline (1945) (Imperial War Museums, U.K.)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1978-053-33, Paris, deutsche Soldaten in der Metro.jpg, Luftwaffe officers on the Metro (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-2004-0216-500, Paris, deutsche Parole am Bourbon-Palast.jpg, Horse-drawn coaches in front of the National Assembly, decorated with slogan: "Germany is winning on all fronts" (Bundesarchiv)
File:Parisian Traffic, Spring 1945- Everyday Life in Paris, France, 1945 D24176.jpg, The pedi-cab, or bicycle taxi, was still in use in the spring of 1945 (Imperial War Museums, U.K.)

Due to the shortage of fuel, the number of automobiles on the Paris streets dropped from 350,000 before the war to just under 4,500. One customer, sitting on the terrace of a café on the ''Place de la Bourse'', counted the number of cars which passed between noon and twelve-thirty: only three came by. Older means of transportation, such as the horse-drawn ''fiacre'' came back into service. Trucks and automobiles that did circulate often used gazogene, a poor-quality fuel carried in a tank on the roof, or coal gas or methane, extracted from the Paris sewers.

The metro ran, but service was frequently interrupted and the cars were overcrowded. Three thousand five hundred buses had run on the Paris streets in 1939, but only five hundred were still running in the autumn of 1940. Bicycle-taxis became popular, and their drivers charged a high tariff. Bicycles became the means of transport for many Parisians, and their price soared; a used bicycle cost a month's salary.

The transportation problems did not end with the liberation of Paris; the shortage of gasoline and lack of transport continued until well after the war.

Culture and the arts

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L15196, Paris, Besuch Gerd v. Rundstedt im Louvre.jpg, German field marshal Gerd von Rundstedt is given a tour of the Louvre, October 10, 1940 (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1985-1216-509, Paris, Oper.jpg, The Paris Opera decorated with swastikas for a festival of German music, 1941 (Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R1213-0502, Gastspiel des Berliner Schiller-Theaters im besetzten Frankreich.jpg, After a performance of Schiller's ''Intrigue and Love'' at the ''Théâtre des Champs-Élysées'' in 1941, from left to right: Dr. Ley, Reich organization leader; Heinrich George, Schiller Theater Intendant; and German actress Gisela Uhlen (Bundesarchiv)
File:Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume.jpg, The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume became a storehouse for art stolen from Jewish families (TCY, 2007)
File:Johannes Vermeer - The Astronomer - 1668.jpg, Vermeer's 1668 painting '' The Astronomer'' was stolen from the Rothschild family by the Nazis and given to Adolf Hitler

One of the greatest art thefts in history took place in Paris during the Occupation, as the Nazis looted the art of Jewish collectors on a grand scale. Great masterpieces in the Louvre had already been evacuated to the châteaux of the Loire Valley and the unoccupied zone, and were safe. The German Army was respectful of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and refused to transfer the works in French museums out of the country, but the Nazi leaders were not so scrupulous. On 30 June 1940, Hitler ordered that all art works in France, public and private, should be "safeguarded". Many of the French wealthy Jewish families had sent their art works out of France before leaving the country, but others had left their art collections behind. A new law decreed that those who had left France just before the war were no longer French citizens, and their property could be seized. The Gestapo began visiting bank vaults and empty residences, and collecting the works of art. The pieces left behind in the fifteen largest Jewish-owned art galleries in Paris were also collected, and transported in French police vans. In September, a new organization, the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (''Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg'') was created to catalog and store the art. It was moved to the ''Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume'', a building in the Tuileries Gardens used by the Louvre for temporary exhibits. More than four hundred crates of art works were brought to the ''Jeu de Paume'' by ''Luftwaffe'' personnel, unpacked and cataloged. Hermann Göring, the head of the ''Luftwaffe'', visited the ''Jeu de Paume'' on November 3 and returned on the 5th, spending the entire day there, picking out works for his private collection. He selected twenty-seven paintings, including works by Rembrandt and Van Dyck owned by Edouard de Rothschild, as well as stained glass windows and furniture intended for Carinhall, the luxurious hunting lodge he had built in the ''Schorfheide'' Forest, in Germany. Another Rothschild-owned painting, '' The Astronomer'' by Vermeer, was reserved for Hitler himself. Fifteen railroad boxcars full of artworks were sent to Germany with Göring's personal train. Göring visited the ''Jeu de Paume'' twelve more times in 1941, and five times in 1942, adding to his collection.

Confiscations continued at banks, warehouses and private residences, with paintings, furniture, statues, clocks and jewelry accumulating at the ''Jeu de Paume'', and filling the whole ground floor. The staff at the ''Jeu de Paume'' cataloged 218 major collections. Between April 1941 and July 1944, 4,174 cases of art works filling 138 boxcars, were shipped from Paris to Germany. Much of the art, but not all, was recovered after the war.

Arts

While some painters left Paris, many remained and continued working. Georges Braque returned to Paris in autumn 1940 and quietly continued working. Pablo Picasso spent most of 1939 in a villa in Royan, north of Bordeaux. He returned to Paris and resumed working in his studio on '' rue des Grands Augustins''. He frequently received visitors at his studio, including Germans, some admiring and some suspicious. He had postcards made of his famous anti-fascist work, ''Guernica'', to hand out as souvenirs to visitors, and had serious discussions of art and politics with visiting Germans, including writer Ernst Jünger. While his work was officially condemned as "degenerate", his paintings continued to be sold at the Hôtel Drouot auction house and at the Galerie Louise Leiris, formerly Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's. German treasurer officials opened Picasso's bank vault, where he stored his private art collection, searching for Jewish-owned art they could seize. Picasso so confused them with his descriptions of ownership of the paintings that they left without taking anything. He also persuaded them that the paintings in the adjoining vault, owned by Braque, were actually his own. Other "degenerate" artists, including Kandinsky and Henri Matisse, who sent drawings up to Paris from his residence in Nice, were officially condemned but continued to sell their works in the back rooms of Paris galleries.

A few actors, such as Jean Gabin and film director Jean Renoir chose, for political or personal reasons, to leave Paris, but many others remained, avoided politics and focused on their art. These included the actor Fernandel, the film director and playwright Sacha Guitry, and the singers Édith Piaf, Tino Rossi, Charles Trenet and Yves Montand. The jazz musician Django Reinhardt played with the ''Quintette du Hot Club de France'' for German and French fans. In 1941, Maurice Chevalier performed a new revue in the ''Casino de Paris'': ''Bonjour Paris''. The songs ''Ça sent si bon la France'' and ''La Chanson du maçon'' became hits. The Nazis asked Chevalier to perform in Berlin and sing for Radio Paris. He refused but did perform for French prisoners of war in Germany, and succeeded in obtaining the liberation of ten prisoners in exchange.

The writer Colette, who was 67 when the war began, worked quietly on her ''mémoires'' in her apartment at 9 ''rue du Beaujolais'', next to the gardens of the Palais-Royal. Her husband, Maurice Goudeket, a Jew, was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1941, and although he was released after a few months through the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador Otto Abetz, Colette lived through the rest of the war years with the anxiety of a possible second arrest. In 1944, she published one of her most famous works, '' Gigi''.

The philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre continued to write and publish; Simone de Beauvoir produced a broadcast on the history of the music hall for Radio Paris; and Marguerite Duras worked at a publishing house. The actress Danielle Darrieux made a tour to Berlin, in exchange for the liberation of her husband, Porfirio Rubirosa, a Dominican diplomat suspected of espionage. The actress Arletty, the star of ''Les Enfants du Paradis'' and ''Hôtel du Nord'', had a relationship with Hans Jürgen Soehring, a ''Luftwaffe'' officer, and gave the famous riposte to a member of the FFI interrogating her after the Liberation: "My heart is French, but my a-- is international." '

Jewish actors were not allowed to perform.

Some places in Paris were frequented by homosexual actors and artists; notably the swimming pool in the Bois de Boulogne. The actor Jean Marais was officially harassed for his homosexuality, and the actor Robert-Hugues Lambert was arrested and deported, most likely because of his relationship with a German officer whom he did not want to name. He was murdered at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 7 March 1945.

The Germans made a continual effort to seduce the Parisians through culture: in 1941, they organized a festival of German music by the Berlin Philharmonic at the Paris Opera, a play from the Schiller Theater in Berlin at the ''Théâtre des Champs-Élysées'', and an exhibit by the German sculptor Arno Breker.

The French film industry, based in suburbs of Paris, had a very difficult existence due to shortages of personnel, film and food, but it produced several genuine masterpieces, among which: Marcel Carné's ''Les Enfants du Paradis'' ("Children of Paradise") which was filmed during the Occupation but not released until 1945.

Antisemitism

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1975-041-07, Paris, Propaganda gegen Juden.jpg, Poster for an official anti-semitic exposition, "The Jew and France", (Bundesarchiv, 1941)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S59096, Plakat im Fenster eines französischen Restaurants.jpg, A German sign outside a Paris restaurant announces that Jews are not admitted (Bundesarchiv, 1 September 1940)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-N0619-506, Paris, Jüdische Frauen mit Stern.jpg, Jewish women were required to wear a yellow Star of David (Bundesarchiv, 1 June 1942)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S69265, Frankreich, Paris, zerstörte Synagoge.jpg, The Synagogue of Montmartre and several others were attacked and vandalized in 1941.(Bundesarchiv)
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-2008-0710-500, Paris, Geschäft mit antijüdischer Kennzeichnung.jpg, A Jewish-owned shop in the Marais, wrecked in May 1941 (Bundesarchiv)

From the very beginning of the Occupation, Jews in Paris were treated with particular harshness. On October 18, 1940, the German occupation authorities decreed, in what is known as the ''Ordonnance d'Aryanisation'', that Jews would have a special status and be barred from liberal professions, such as commerce, industry, thus affecting lawyers, doctors, professors, shop owners, and also be barred from certain restaurants and public places, and that their property was seized. On May 23, 1942, the head of the Anti-Jewish section of the Gestapo, Adolf Eichmann