Diaries of parisians
On this page, I'm sharing excerpts from two diarists alive (mostly) during the Occupation. They are Jean Guehenno and Helene Barr. Jean was a teacher, but did not actively participate in the Resistance. Helene Barr is often called the "Parisian Anne Frank".
Jean Guehenno
“I want the reader to remember that hope never stopped running… through the streets of Paris: by hiding. Faces in the metro were morose. But could we know what that seamstress was carrying in her handbag, between her lipstick and her compact? That ordinary-looking package a young student had set down on the floor next to her was a radio transmitter, lists of airdrops, mail from London, or weapons…” - xxx
“The bells for the ‘Ceasefire’ rang at midnight. I had not realized that I loved my country so much. I am full of pain, anger, and shame. I’ve reached the point where I can’t talk to anyone I suspect of judging this event in a way that differs from mine. At the first word that reveals his spinelessness, his acceptance, I hate him. I feel a kind of physical horror, I move away…. I will take refuge in my real country. My country, my France, is a France that cannot be invaded.” - June 25, 1940, pg 3
“We all know very well that democracy in this country was not sufficiently real for the conscience of all our citizens to be moved by the scheming, cheating, and intrigues that teams of politicians have indulged in for the past twenty years -- teams on different sides, representing opposing interests, but unfortunately all very similar in their presumption, their inconsistency, their fecklessness, and their lack of presence of mind. These politicians were able to jeopardize our happiness and throw us into dangerous ventures. They failed to engage our honor.” - July 5, 1940 - pg 4-5
“The city seems dead. The street is almost empty. Nothing but German military vehicles. The Frenchman is a pedestrian and cyclist… I am pleased with the Parisians. They pass by the Germans the way they pass by dogs and cats. It seems they neither see them nor hear them.” - September 7, 1940 - pg 18
“I could feel something had changed, but I had tried vainly to discover what it was. And then yesterday, while we were taking a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, Emilie told me all the birds were dead. That was it. It seems all the birds died in Paris when the large oil and gas tanks were set on fire as the germans approached. As the black smoke spread out over the city and the parks, it poisoned everything. What is certain is that nothing is moving or singing in the trees behind the house, and Emilie throws breadcrumbs out the window after dinner and calls in vain. The birds have either left or they’re dead, and that adds to our sadness.” - September 16, 1940 - pg 20
“The other day a biologist explained to me that [the rationing] was barely sufficient to keep people alive provided they remain lying down and don’t work…. It seems people are beginning to sell their coupons. The poorest sell the richest their right to live and eat.” October 10, 1940 - pg 27
“In the lycée, my students offer me their season’s greetings. Using a face of Alain’s, they wish me: ‘think spring’.” (Alain was a moral philosopher who was influential at the time and profoundly democratic and liberal) December 20, 1940 - pg 44
“Life in Paris is growing very difficult. We have ration tickets, but we can’t buy anything with them anymore. The shops are empty. At home, we’ve lived exclusively on parcels sent by friends and cousins in Brittany for the past two weeks.” - January 3, 1941 - pg 51
“Yesterday, as we were explicating Book VI of the Aeneid, we came across these words of Aeneas when he as decided to return to combat: Arma, viri, ferte arma… The student who was translating naturally took care to mistranslate: ‘To arms, citizens!’ he cried, and we laughed, seriously.” - March 3, 1941 - pg 65 (Amra viri means “weapons, men, bring weapons” - the mistranslation is a rousing line from the chorus of the Marseillaise - Aux armes, citoyens!)
“Young R… came to see me. A parisian woman, a schoolteacher intern in the Yonne region. She’s here for the holidays. Her mother, a member of the Communist Party, was arrested and sentenced to a year in jail. …. While the policemen were doing their job, a friend of Mme R… knocked on the door. The police opened it. She was carrying a packet of leaflets. So they arrested the two women. Young R… does not cry as she tells me her troubles. But I can see her lips trembling from pain and rage. The three women lived together, her mother, her aunt, and her. The policemen are boasting of shutting all three of them down.” April 9, 1941 - pg 73
“A visit from my former student R… who’s just out of prison. He’s coming out of it more of a Communist than when he went in…. There were four of them in the same cell sleeping on the same straw mattress. His companions were two thieves, a murderer -- ‘such good guys’, he explained…. His comrades are heping him. This solidarity is the true greatness of that political party… Every week a comrade goes to the prison to pick up [the other Communists] laundry, washes it, and mends whatever needs mending.” - April 19, 1941 - pg 78
“Yesterday, in the name of the laws of France, 5,000 Jews were taken away to concentration camps. Poor Jews from Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, Humble people with modest trades who were greatly endangering the state. They call this ‘purification’. On Rue Compans several men were taken away. Their wives and children begged the police, shouted, wept…. The working people of Paris who saw these heartrending scenes were ful of indignation and shame.” May 15, 1941 -- 83
“A year ago, black smoke was falling over Paris; the trees and the sidewalks were covered with soot… People said the enemy armies were advancing, hidden in a cloud. Paris was almost empty. The whole city was on the roads, toward the Loire, toward Brittany. After the flight and panic of the last days, a prodigious silence reigned over the city. Toward eleven o’clock we heard music. They were arriving. Today the glass-eyed Parisians, through a secret agreement, are all wearing a black tie: Resistance to oppression!” - June 14th, 1941, pg 92
“On the afternoon of July 14, we walked out on the boulevards. What ingenuity to bring the three forbidden colors together, one way or another. It was easier for the women. A few of them seemed rolled up in flags…. Men had fewer means of doing it. They let one of those match boxes decorated with a blue-white-and-red emblem stick out of their jacket pockets. Never had people looked at each other more carefully. Each one worked at recognizing the others’ intentions…. What pathetic efforts. But not wasted, after all. That mutual attention ended up by creating the joy of a communion.” - July 17th, 1941 - pg 101
“Vainly has German propaganda tried to appropriate the V’s. The battle continues and no confusion is possible. The German V’s are not very numerous but colossal: they are spread out over public monuments, on flags, on posters. The V’s of the Resistance are tiny, but innumerable: Metro tickets folded into a V, matches broken into a V…” - August 17, 1941 - pg 108
“In some neighborhoods the police are closing off the streets. A whole arrondissement (the 11th) has been searched. Jews have been arrested, Communists shot. Every morning, new posters invite us to become informers and threaten us with death…. For the past two weeks, all meat has been confiscated. The moment is approaching when no one will have anything left to care about…” August 21, 1941 -- pg 109
“I want the reader to remember that hope never stopped running… through the streets of Paris: by hiding. Faces in the metro were morose. But could we know what that seamstress was carrying in her handbag, between her lipstick and her compact? That ordinary-looking package a young student had set down on the floor next to her was a radio transmitter, lists of airdrops, mail from London, or weapons…” - xxx
“The bells for the ‘Ceasefire’ rang at midnight. I had not realized that I loved my country so much. I am full of pain, anger, and shame. I’ve reached the point where I can’t talk to anyone I suspect of judging this event in a way that differs from mine. At the first word that reveals his spinelessness, his acceptance, I hate him. I feel a kind of physical horror, I move away…. I will take refuge in my real country. My country, my France, is a France that cannot be invaded.” - June 25, 1940, pg 3
“We all know very well that democracy in this country was not sufficiently real for the conscience of all our citizens to be moved by the scheming, cheating, and intrigues that teams of politicians have indulged in for the past twenty years -- teams on different sides, representing opposing interests, but unfortunately all very similar in their presumption, their inconsistency, their fecklessness, and their lack of presence of mind. These politicians were able to jeopardize our happiness and throw us into dangerous ventures. They failed to engage our honor.” - July 5, 1940 - pg 4-5
“The city seems dead. The street is almost empty. Nothing but German military vehicles. The Frenchman is a pedestrian and cyclist… I am pleased with the Parisians. They pass by the Germans the way they pass by dogs and cats. It seems they neither see them nor hear them.” - September 7, 1940 - pg 18
“I could feel something had changed, but I had tried vainly to discover what it was. And then yesterday, while we were taking a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, Emilie told me all the birds were dead. That was it. It seems all the birds died in Paris when the large oil and gas tanks were set on fire as the germans approached. As the black smoke spread out over the city and the parks, it poisoned everything. What is certain is that nothing is moving or singing in the trees behind the house, and Emilie throws breadcrumbs out the window after dinner and calls in vain. The birds have either left or they’re dead, and that adds to our sadness.” - September 16, 1940 - pg 20
“The other day a biologist explained to me that [the rationing] was barely sufficient to keep people alive provided they remain lying down and don’t work…. It seems people are beginning to sell their coupons. The poorest sell the richest their right to live and eat.” October 10, 1940 - pg 27
“In the lycée, my students offer me their season’s greetings. Using a face of Alain’s, they wish me: ‘think spring’.” (Alain was a moral philosopher who was influential at the time and profoundly democratic and liberal) December 20, 1940 - pg 44
“Life in Paris is growing very difficult. We have ration tickets, but we can’t buy anything with them anymore. The shops are empty. At home, we’ve lived exclusively on parcels sent by friends and cousins in Brittany for the past two weeks.” - January 3, 1941 - pg 51
“Yesterday, as we were explicating Book VI of the Aeneid, we came across these words of Aeneas when he as decided to return to combat: Arma, viri, ferte arma… The student who was translating naturally took care to mistranslate: ‘To arms, citizens!’ he cried, and we laughed, seriously.” - March 3, 1941 - pg 65 (Amra viri means “weapons, men, bring weapons” - the mistranslation is a rousing line from the chorus of the Marseillaise - Aux armes, citoyens!)
“Young R… came to see me. A parisian woman, a schoolteacher intern in the Yonne region. She’s here for the holidays. Her mother, a member of the Communist Party, was arrested and sentenced to a year in jail. …. While the policemen were doing their job, a friend of Mme R… knocked on the door. The police opened it. She was carrying a packet of leaflets. So they arrested the two women. Young R… does not cry as she tells me her troubles. But I can see her lips trembling from pain and rage. The three women lived together, her mother, her aunt, and her. The policemen are boasting of shutting all three of them down.” April 9, 1941 - pg 73
“A visit from my former student R… who’s just out of prison. He’s coming out of it more of a Communist than when he went in…. There were four of them in the same cell sleeping on the same straw mattress. His companions were two thieves, a murderer -- ‘such good guys’, he explained…. His comrades are heping him. This solidarity is the true greatness of that political party… Every week a comrade goes to the prison to pick up [the other Communists] laundry, washes it, and mends whatever needs mending.” - April 19, 1941 - pg 78
“Yesterday, in the name of the laws of France, 5,000 Jews were taken away to concentration camps. Poor Jews from Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, Humble people with modest trades who were greatly endangering the state. They call this ‘purification’. On Rue Compans several men were taken away. Their wives and children begged the police, shouted, wept…. The working people of Paris who saw these heartrending scenes were ful of indignation and shame.” May 15, 1941 -- 83
“A year ago, black smoke was falling over Paris; the trees and the sidewalks were covered with soot… People said the enemy armies were advancing, hidden in a cloud. Paris was almost empty. The whole city was on the roads, toward the Loire, toward Brittany. After the flight and panic of the last days, a prodigious silence reigned over the city. Toward eleven o’clock we heard music. They were arriving. Today the glass-eyed Parisians, through a secret agreement, are all wearing a black tie: Resistance to oppression!” - June 14th, 1941, pg 92
“On the afternoon of July 14, we walked out on the boulevards. What ingenuity to bring the three forbidden colors together, one way or another. It was easier for the women. A few of them seemed rolled up in flags…. Men had fewer means of doing it. They let one of those match boxes decorated with a blue-white-and-red emblem stick out of their jacket pockets. Never had people looked at each other more carefully. Each one worked at recognizing the others’ intentions…. What pathetic efforts. But not wasted, after all. That mutual attention ended up by creating the joy of a communion.” - July 17th, 1941 - pg 101
“Vainly has German propaganda tried to appropriate the V’s. The battle continues and no confusion is possible. The German V’s are not very numerous but colossal: they are spread out over public monuments, on flags, on posters. The V’s of the Resistance are tiny, but innumerable: Metro tickets folded into a V, matches broken into a V…” - August 17, 1941 - pg 108
“In some neighborhoods the police are closing off the streets. A whole arrondissement (the 11th) has been searched. Jews have been arrested, Communists shot. Every morning, new posters invite us to become informers and threaten us with death…. For the past two weeks, all meat has been confiscated. The moment is approaching when no one will have anything left to care about…” August 21, 1941 -- pg 109