Les Parisiennes

Ingrid Bergman: “Do you remember Paris?” Humphrey Bogart: “You wore blue; the Germans wore grey.” Sebba’s

Casablanca quote sums up this study of the French woman’s wartime spirit; individuality coupled with resistance. Occupied by Nazis, Parisiennes had to live with Germans.

“For some the choice involved leaving a restaurant. Others a sexual exchange,” Sebba writes, “Paris was a prized posting … you could get butter, coffee, Cartier jewellery.” When skeletal camp survivors returned to Paris after liberation, the women were a reminder of a war people believed over. “There was an air of disgust, insults flung.”