When Paris Went Dark

From the Preface... I do not claim the mantle of historian but rather of storyteller and guide; I have perused with care what others have written and have teased out stories that have always been there but had settled under the dust of memory and history. I have plumbed the extraordinary archival work done by others and done some of my own, always looking for fissures in texts that allow for a richer reading of a traumatic period in European history. Here are the famous and unknown voices of adolescents and adults, Germans and French, men and women, Jews and non-Jews, visitors and residents, collaborators and patriots, novelists and historians, journalists and diarists, the still living and the gone. Some appear repeatedly, some occasionally, and some only once. I have interviewed men and women who lived in Paris at the time. They offered anecdotes that became bright tiles in a vibrant mosaic that reveals more clearly how a familiar and beloved city became, even temporarily, threatening and uncanny. As one person raised in Paris during this period answered when I asked if her parents ever discussed the Occupation: “It [the memory of the Occupation] was like a secret garden whose gates were always closed to us.” When Paris Went Dark makes an effort to look over that garden’s walls.

Year

2014

Language

English

Publisher

Little, Brown and Company

Editions

2

ISBN

9780316217453

Data source: Wikidata