When Paris Went Dark (6 page)

The departure of the central government left the capital bereft of political leadership. Overnight, Parisians realized that they had been comforted for weeks with misinformation and patriotic bombast. Spoken and unspoken questions permeated the city’s marketplaces and cafés. How had the Germans advanced so rapidly? Where are they now? Who is between them and Paris? Is there a “fifth column” now in the city?
^*
It took a while for residents to believe that such a calamity, the collapse of their capital’s defenses, could be allowed to happen, despite intimations to the contrary. Most Parisians—white- and blue-collar workers, bureaucrats, small businessmen, students, and the elderly—still held to the narcissistic notion that they and their city were not part of the war. When the Communists organized an anti-Nazi propaganda campaign, the reaction had been ho-hum. “What’s the use of defeating Hitler if we wind up with the
Front populaire
[the Socialists and Communists]?” was a common observation. Another:
“Mieux vaut Hitler que Blum”
(Better Hitler than Blum—a Socialist prime minister and a Jew). Nor did the weather help prepare Parisians for disaster: many observers mentioned the clear, blue skies and mild temperatures that had favored the capital during the last weeks of May and early June. At first quietly, then less and less so, reality began to pierce this veil of lassitude. French cinemas had been showing newsreels of the German air bombardments of Warsaw in the fall of 1939 and then their flattening of Rotterdam in May. Concerns had been heightened by scenes of deeply frightened civilians, especially women and children, fleeing burning buildings with a few belongings—still, after all, this was Paris, and the French army was reputed to be at least equal to anything the upstart Germans could put in the field.

The war came inexorably closer to a Paris still locked in the false comfort of imagined protection. Irène Némirovsky describes how
difficult it was for Paris to realize that it was itself part of the war and that it could be harmed:

The little hill villages of Auteuil and Passy had only been part of Paris since 1860, when they became the city’s western 16th arrondissement. Then, as today, they included the most prestigious addresses, the sites of many embassies and consulates. By late May of 1940, the boulevards and streets of this cosseted area had become even quieter and certainly emptier than usual. Just two weeks after Hitler’s invasion of Belgium, on May 10, chauffeured limousines, trunks filled, had begun easing efficiently southward, toward the Porte d’Orléans, Paris’s gateway to the Loire Valley, where it was believed any German offensive would be stopped. How did these well-connected and affluent Parisians come to take to the roads even before the larger refugee lines would enter Paris from Flanders and northern France? Their highly placed connections had informed them that the city was in imminent danger and that, despite what the radio and newspapers were saying, the Battle of France was over. At the same time, in the eastern, working-class arrondissements of Paris, there was concern but not yet panic. After all, had not the government repeatedly promised that Paris would not fall, that the army would make the same ferocious stand it had made in 1914, when the taxicabs of Paris had brought reinforcements to the Marne to finally break the back of the German offensive? Besides, most of the working-class population of eastern Paris had no automobiles, little free time from work, and little money to buy train tickets. While one side of the city was quietly closing its shutters,
locking its doors, emptying its safe-deposit boxes, and heading south out of town, the other was living daily in the expectation that everything would work out.

The massive and unanticipated defeat of its vaunted armed forces would have been enough to cause paralyzing anxiety in any besieged city. But hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France plodding relentlessly southward toward hoped-for sanctuary mesmerized the Parisians. These desperate northerners sharing roads with the remnants of a disorganized and dispirited French army drew a collective gasp from the theretofore complacent Parisians. It was not much longer before they too began joining that exodus, almost like metal filings pulled toward a strong magnet. This panicky act of running away would forge a profound sense of embarrassment, self-abasement, guilt, and a felt loss of masculine superiority that would mark the years of the Occupation.

Slowly, the news of military collapse spread to the middle-class and working-class neighborhoods as rumors flew about German paratroopers disguised as nuns and about Communists ready to take over the city hall. Newspapers warned of the ever-imagined “fifth column,” ready to turn Paris over to the Germans, and, at the other extreme, of the resisters, ready to fight the Wehrmacht down to the last alleyway of the invaded city. Public anger grew, and citizens became much more vocal about the government’s pusillanimity. The panic was more palpable because its cause was so unclear: Were Parisians supposed to stay and defend the city? Or hide? Or leave? Was the entire army retreating? Would there be a siege, as there was in 1870? Wrote a historian: “Those who leave are still making up excuses: the children, a sick relative, family business in the provinces. But, in the
beaux quartiers
especially [e.g., the 16th arrondissement], the streets are lined with building after building, shutters tightly closed, as if in the grip of a contagious illness.”
¹³

Stunningly, almost four million inhabitants fled Paris and its environs in late May and early June rather than await the increasingly inevitable occupation of their precious capital.
^*
Several memoirists mention that Parisian boulevards soon resembled empty movie sets—an ironic comment given the reputation of the city as a somewhat artificial but beautiful exemplum of urban life. Groceries and bakeries were closed, their entrances barricaded; automobiles had vanished; dogs ran unleashed (if they had not been poisoned by their owners); diplomats and ministries burned so much paper that a smoky pall unnerved the citizens who believed that the Germans were at their gates. Distilleries and oil storage farms added greasy clouds to the mix. Rumors outran attempts by the remaining authorities at calming fears; a few citizens committed suicide. Everyone, it seemed, suddenly wanted to leave their city before it was attacked and invaded by a relentless foreign army.

A strangely empty Champs-Élysées.
(Verlag der Deutschen Arbeitsfront)

Again, one of the most compelling narratives that we have of this, the largest civilian exodus in modern times up to that point, comes from Némirovsky. We should remember that she wrote her novel while the events were still fresh in her mind, just a year or so afterward, and the vividness of her descriptions of the panic that took hold of northern France and Paris is incomparable. She describes a world turned upside down, where lost or abandoned children ran wild, mothers stole gasoline, the elderly were left behind, self-interest and greed were rampant, and class divisions were exacerbated; where the fear of strafing planes, marauding French soldiers, and other looters dominated life minute by minute. And no one knew exactly where he or she was heading—toward what or whom, or how far to run. When would times return to normal? The exodus, in Némirovsky’s hands, takes on an almost mythical cast for those who later heard of it:

And further on, one character likens his joining the exodus to those who escaped Pompeii under the ash of Vesuvius, leaving behind all that was important to them, not knowing when they would return or if their homes or possessions would be the same when they did.

Fleeing uncertainty.
(© LAPI / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)

French and foreign Jews felt especially vulnerable. Most just stayed put, praying somehow that the French government and its republican traditions would protect them from Nazi racism. But a few read the writing on the wall more astutely than others. One was a Jewish diamond merchant whose family had been French for generations and who was prescient enough to understand that not only was his business about to suffer, so were his wife and children if the Nazis instituted their racial policies in France. He had quietly procured exit visas for his family and had hired automobiles to drive them from Paris to the Spanish border and safety. One major problem remained. Border guards all over Europe had discovered how easy it was to demand bribes from fleeing Jews and other hunted persons, and the merchant knew that he would not be able to successfully carry his valuable stock of diamonds over the border. He had to leave them hidden in Paris—but where? Taking a rather risky chance, he decided to rely on a friend, a soccer buddy from his lycée years, a Gentile.

The plan he devised was audacious. Heating up a large amount of
lardlike unguent, he poured the mixture into a tall, clear jar. Then he dribbled the clear, precious stones into the liquid, constantly stirring it as it cooled, so that the gems would not settle to the bottom. Soon the concoction congealed; from the outside, the suspended diamonds were invisible. He arrived at his friend’s home, holding the apparently innocuous bottle as if he were carrying a child.

His friend welcomed him with the warmth he had expected. After they worried together about the current state of Paris and France, the diamond trader said: “I must leave France, for obvious reasons. I am unsure about when I will be able to return, but I do know that I would like to have this jar of a family remedy, an unguent for all that ails you, waiting here for me. It means a lot to my family and to our memories. Could I ask you to keep it?” Bemused, his friend accepted the consignment, relieved that the request was as simple as storing a bottle in his house. The merchant left, unburdened but apprehensive. Had he outsmarted himself? Should he have told his friend what the jar contained? What if…? But more immediate concerns dominated. Fortunately, the merchant’s escape with his family was a success. Making their way into and across Spain, they set sail from Portugal for the United States, where they remained for five long years. Around the dinner table, hundreds of times, the family wondered about that apparently innocuous bottle sitting in a dark cupboard back in occupied Paris. In early 1946, when our merchant could finally return to the city, he found himself once again in his friend’s kitchen. For a while they exchanged stories of the war years. After a bit, the Jewish friend broached the subject that had preoccupied him for half a decade: “Do you recall that jar of unguent I left with you in June of 1940?” At first, his friend looked puzzled. “Jar? Unguent?” Then he remembered what had not crossed his mind since his friend had left. Getting up from the table, he rummaged around in a remote cupboard, mumbling: “I hope we didn’t throw it out when we moved things around during the war.” The merchant politely waited, his guts in a knot. “Aha! I found it, I think. Is this the jar?”

“Oh, yes,” the merchant answered, holding it, once again, as if it were a fragile Ming vase. “Now I have a story for you. Could you light up your stove and get me a sieve and a pan?”