about 5,000 square feet. and we keep stock of all the books so that when a customer orders we can get it shipped out right away. if it is custom, you know, add to the design center. we would make various customization send personalized editions changes. and back here we try to keep a little bit of inventory of everything in addition. in a customer says, you know, as a spent three years building my house. housewarming party next week, but my shelves are empty, african put together a library for them or just the process of curating. if it is a longer lead time. so we have everything from antique leather books like you see on this card here to cook books, sometimes customers wanting to buy color as well as by subjects this is the beginning of a project like that. gathering some art books. standard size. saw it -- sort does bite subject and color and light things out and pretend like we're working with the customer show so we know exactly how many books is to get. this is the beginning of a project for client they give us a list of everything there were interested in. then he wants an image across all of the shells to make up the brooklyn bridge. so we got a photographer, sent them out to new york and took a photo and super high-resolution perry said he came back in a few weeks and the entire wall would make up that image you see right there. but there would have the titles worked into the book jacket. so i beautiful art installation as well as great library. he put a lot of attention to detail into everything. it's all pretty labor-intensive to make sure is perfect afford ships. we have one project last summer we get all golf course library decorative based upon one photo of a fair way. and it took about ten weeks to produce. it went across 900 books. each one had to line up perfectly. and then when we shipped we had to make sure that every book was coated in the exact order to one package, like putting together a giant puzzle. so that was probably one of my favorite project of one of the most labor-intensive as well. as far as people's -- people being superficial, i have heard a lot of that over the years. i think people really like it what i do in combining great books with great esthetics and giving people a reason to keep books on the shelves i think it is much deeper than what people really think of when they see what we do. and in the age of e-book you have to give people a reason to own a printed book and keep it on their shelves. you know, the publishers and who have really invested in making beautiful books that people want to keep or even great literary classics, library and latin america, if you make the book better than it was before in the making durable and beautiful and sometimes we and our value, but jackets on top, think people really have a reason to add to their shelves and not just do their reading on a device. >> for more information on book tv recent visit to boulder, colorado and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles go to c-span.org / local content. >> book tv continues with professor ronald rosbottom looking at not see occupied paris during world war ii recounting daily life in the city during the four years of occupation, the development of an underground resistance at its liberation. this is a little under our. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everyone. think we would like to get started with tonight's program. we do have c-span book tv here tonight. so we are excited about that . grateful that people will be will to see the program. and to that end i just wanted to ask you, please, if you have questions -- and there will be a fairly long question and answer session where we will pass a hand-held microphone around so that you can be heard for the recording. indicates that you have a question and we will come along. so we will be able to ask questions. so appreciate your cooperating. but i do want to introduce professor and author who has recently written and released this city of life and chairman -- "when paris went dark: the city of lights under german occupation, 1940-1944". presented in partnership with our local independent bookstore. thank you very much. paris, the city of light was silenced and german tanks rolled into it on june june 14th 1940. within a week paris was defeated and occupied. many attribute the strong united resistance movement encompassing citizens from all walks of life despite differences in politics, religion, age, and gender. the movement included many cultural and outcomes and intellectuals operated under the of ex military officer charles de gaulle. the author of "when paris went dark" was born in new orleans and educated at princeton university. in the 60's he went to paris for the first time. it was not until ten years ago that he turned his collection into a book particularly researched including archives, interviews. he has written an astute, unbiased work that captures not only the dark days of paris and its citizens the loneliness of the young german troops as well. and we just learned today that it is in the top-10 list for the national book award this year, so that is really exciting, great news. [applause] run is professor of arts and humanities and professor of french european studies at amherst where he has served as dean of faculty. in addition to the publication of "when paris went dark," he has published well over 100 articles and book reviews, three essay collections than has written two novels. please join me in welcoming professor rosbottom to the new canaan library. [applause] >> thank you, susan. and thank you for inviting me here. my wife is a cookbook writer . she came a couple of years ago. her new book, i am here to promote, semi casual, she will be back up here in about a month to sign it. in fact, i wanted to have an evening where we would talk brought it there. but she has much better taste. and i want to thank the new canaan library. these libraries are marvelous in the way they bring together people like you are interested in questions and your good readers. thank goodness there are still people who read an american, read books. this book was -- what i am going to do is just give you a very brief introduction to what i am trying to do in the but when and i will read to experts in and out will open not a discussion for questions. because i have found in speaking about this book and before it was even published speaking about the subject that the question and answer sessions were by far the most interesting certainly for you and for me as well. "when paris went dark" is not an administrative or military or political or even a social history of the occupation. aid is an attempt at what i have decided to call a tactile history, a showing how it might have helped for the occupied in the occupied arab to be on edge in a familiar environment for over four years. the book will elicit and has elicited challenging responses from professional historians because it does not explain some much as it shows. i show and then i infer from a distance of three-quarters of a century what it may have been like to have live in occupied paris. i have endeavored to give a tone of suggestiveness rent and uncertainty about how such a vexed question is as, should i resist? if so, how? should i stay? should i accommodate and weight? collaborate and, perhaps, prosper? where does accommodation and the collaboration began the? home cannot trust? as the war goes on and time passes how i just changes. to distill possible answers from the memoirs, letters, diaries commander of the histories, the interviews i have had, perhaps presumptuous. yet it takes a certain amount of presumption to think one can understand him in action and the motion seven decades after they have occurred. but i think we must try. so let me read you to passages. it will give you a sense of what the book is about and then if you have questions we can talk about it. and if he did not have questions, since c-span is coming this, i will read some more. [laughter] especially vulnerable. most just a put praying somehow that the french government and its republican traditions would protect them from nazi racism. but as you read the writing on the wall more astutely and others. one was a jewish diamond merchant his family had been french for generations and who was pressed into enough to understand that not only was his business about the suburbs, so were his wife and children. the not seize instituted the policies. he quietly procured exit visas for his family and hired automobiles to drive them from paris to the spanish border and safety. and one major problem remained. border guards all over europe have discovered how easy it was to demand bribes from the fleeing jews and other hunted persons. and it the margin needed he would not be able to successfully carry his valuable stock of diamonds over the border, and it was a stock could you could hold in the palm of your hand. he had to leave them hidden in paris. but where? taking a rather risky chance he decided to rely friend, a soccer body, a gentile. the plan he devised was audacious, heating up a large amount of large-like liquids he poured the mixture into a tall, clear jar. and then he dribbled the clear, precious stones into the liquid stirring it as it cooled so that they jim's would not settle to the bottom. in sin the concoction congealed from the outside the suspended diamonds or invisible he arrived at his friend's home for holding the apparently innocuous bottle as if you're carrying a child. his friend welcome him with the warmth the expected. after they were together about the current state of paris the demonstrators 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 chart of the family rented the, for all that ails you, waiting here for me when i come back. it means a lot to my family to ask you to keep it. his friend excepted the confinement relieved that the request was a simple story a bottle in his house. the merchant left unburdened but apprehensive. as he outsmarted himself. he had told his friend what the charge contained. more immediate concerns dominated. fortunately the emergence escape was a success. making their way into and across in a 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 toch that apparently innocuous bottle sitting in a dark covered back in occupied paris. and early 1946 when he could finally returned 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 to a jewish friend approached the subject of preoccupation for a decade. do you recall that jar i left with you in june of 1940? at first, his friend looked puzzled. jar? and then he remembered it had not crossed his mind since it friend has left. getting a from the table he rummaged around in a remote coverage. i hope we did not throw it out when we moved things around during the war. the merchant politely waited, his guts and and not . i found it. i think. is this it? holding it once again as if it were i mean vons. now i have a story for you. would you light up your stove and give me a sieve and japan? and soon the contents of the charm or bubbling away over a low flame. taking this of the merchant port duponts contents into another container. they're nestled was his diamond reserved. the jim's sparkling as if they had never been covered with animal fat and self. and the grateful merchant selected the brightest, largest diamond from the pile and handed it to his speech was host. take this one for your dear wife. this story was told to me by the son of this man. and now want to move to another side of the story. and that is, how to the germans feel? one of the things that i tried to illustrate in my book is what it was like to be an occupier, what it was like to be a young german soldier and officer in a city that the germans definitely respected and a city that -- where the parisians, as we know, are not always the most welcoming people even if you are a german occupier, where less than friendly. and so this is an anecdote written by an officer whose job has primarily been a death as a sensor. he had been sent to paris to an intelligent to of death. and his job was to a sensor print publications to make sure that there were no issues involved in the riding a publishing and that there was nothing anti german, anti not cnn. -- and site not see in them. her apartment door. it was november of 1940. the germans had been in paris for five months. not used to seeing them in the streets, but she was stunned when she saw on her landing a man in uniform. quickly she called her husband. what could he possibly want with them? the officer politely the saluted and asked if this is where a certain young her lived. yes. they told their unnerving visitor that their son was presently a prisoner of war. they had about a million and a half french soldiers as prisoners of war. the german officer introduced himself as gearhart had known their son while he was studying medicine in germany. studying medicine in germany. coincidently they have the same family name and had bonded because of it. heller told the couple that he was due to paris and that their son was the only person whom he knew to call on. the parisian were confused. their son had never spoken of another student. at any rate, he was not there and would not be for a long time. they did not invite gearhart and/or show any interest in his story. the lieutenant turned away still alone and with ted germans called the city without a gaze, the city without a face. nearly tennant recounts the anecdote in his memoirs published in france in 1981 reminding us of the other side of the occupation. of course we have to consider his memoirs with care. we are not reading contemporary documents but the memories of a man who wants to present himself as sympathetic, educated, highly literate, and generous. nevertheless, his book presents anecdotes that help us to understand further the anxieties that affected many of the right to best officers. obviously a friend. and at least 40 years later and anti not see. an important bureaucrat, charged with the unpleasant task of preventing the publication of french literature that would be construed as anti german or influenced by jews. the visible result of this responsibility was a huge warehouse in paris where thousands upon thousands of on approved books were destroyed or left to molder. he found himself trying to keep french literature vibrant and respectable on the one hand while on the other using the blonde knife of since it -- to chop away at originality and imagination. soon after arriving in paris heller had to accept that he was an outsider. no matter how much of a francophile he considered himself. he was not a tourist, not an innocent bureaucrat but a stranger, one who made the parisians uncomfortable thought it thing recalled how relief if felt each time that he could dress in civilian clothes, especially after having to wear uniform of think. german spent a good deal of their free time in the bath house and swimming pools of paris for the same reason. and as swimsuit, no one could tell the difference between the german and a frenchman. he discovered that even his accent could be construed as swiss rather than german. heller and his country tried to separate themselves from their fellows the only in an attempt to pass as french but also come perhaps, has a mild form of rejection of announce the presence. this was important. not all germans participated in the occupation. he says, one does not conquer paris but is conquered by paris. i lived in always a loan and a state of disarray in english. how not to carry in one's mind or body the marks of such attention when one knows that the gestapo is buying a new, that your comrades or superiors suspect you, you're conscious becomes a dislocated. at one point he learns of a young parisian who offers his services to trust the germans. the live on the st. regis and above a bank where his father was a director. he had arranged to just under their roof of the building a little apartment completely separated from the lower floors. it was tastefully furnished with paneling and antique furniture. he carried down with a group of french and germans. i went up there several times to taste the legs of lamb he got. at the very end of the occupation this same french friend would offer him a secret room near his own isolated department. they could stay until things calm down. after word he naively argued that german could resume his parisian life. heller tells us the story as an illustration of how friendly with each other many upper-class parisians and germans were. the frenchman was not collaborating but simply trying to help a friend who just happened to be a key member of the occupation force. more interestingly, this anecdote reveals how secretive paris was during this time. air raid shelters, a concierge basement, attics, outdoor sheds, sewers, metro stations, relatives apartments, homes in the country. at the end of his memoir he leaves us with an anecdote that can serve as an epilogue for the anxieties of the occupier as he contemplated the loss of the war, the necessity of leaving paris, and the anticipation of returning to a deficit in germany. paris as well as about the patronizing attitude that towards their french charges . heller had noticed movement. and when he approached the founding girl hiding behind them, a french girl. you had best get home, he said. the curfew will catch you outside and you could get picked up. she explained that she had missed her train, lived in the country and had nowhere to stay. hiding until the curfew was lifted in the morning and would catch the first train back home. heller took her to his hotel and ask the concierge's to let the girls sleep in the lobby until the next morning the girl left early leaving a note. she had gotten his name from the concierge. thanking him and promising to call later. and she did prefer several months the two would have dates, bicycle the brides in the country, walks through paris. what was her name, he writes who was she? i never knew. it seems to be what i heard when she mumbled her name. check was for several months my little queen accompany me to the end of the road through a world that each day became heavier and darker for me. heller shares his reader that he never laid a hand on the girl, that they maintained a respectful distance, though they do skinny dip in a country stream. for him it was an innocent i don't. but he describes her and terms that reveals his sexual attraction to or. and then she disappeared and he never saw her again. a year later in november of 1943, at a time when there was a coming fear that germany had lost any initiative in an earlier gain in winning the war, he met another teenager, this time a boeing. a similar sort of detachment . a tenderness toward each other. he would take my hand while we walked. we embraced when we met. nothing more. our runners to last until spring of 44, just a few months before the liberation he to disappeared forever. his anecdotes at the end of his memoir speak to the loneliness, sexual and psychological that is often involved with the occupier. paris had proven to be the decadent styrene so feared by nazism. but befriending children and, perhaps he thought he was sanitizing his sexual loneliness. loneliness, suspicion, and later the threat of assassination weigh heavily on senior officers and bureaucrats stationed i paris. heller recognizes that this is the underneath was like a hidden wasp's nest. the sound of a constant unidentifiable buzzing kept everyone on edge. heller would refuse the offer and hiding place of his french friend, but he would leave a piece of himself in paris. under a tree on the great esplanade that leaves to the san he buried eight tin box filled with notes and diaries. in 1948 he returned for the first time since the war. but he never was able to find is buried treasure. like so many of his compatriots, a part of his past laden in a research and passed. thank you. [applause] so my book is replete with an intense like that. and i guess i have found through reading memoirs, interviews that i've had with people, anecdotes' i have found in newspapers. and what i have tried to do in this book is show how complex the occupation was spirited was not just black verses what varied in terms of moral and ethical issues. very grave. and you have to be careful when you're reading the memoirs of germans who survived the war and survived the suspicions of being in the vermont. that is their quarrels, the gestapo and the ss. you have to be suspicious, but there still is a town that many folks have sympathy for germans that they feel lonely. but there was still an element of that confusion in the german psyche in the french psyche which i try to bring forth in this book. so i am more than happy to read more anecdotes, but i really would like to have you ask questions about this time. let's see how that goes. thank you. >> remember, you are supposed to raise your hand. someone is going to give you a microphone. here is a gentleman right here. i can hear you. i don't know if c-span can. >> would you have done a similar book about another german / nazi occupation, for example, warsaw command, but similar anecdotes? feelings, innuendoes. >> without a doubt. and people have asked that question. the reason i concentrate on paris is a have been there in node well. most loved, most films, most written about, about city in all of europe. when the germans took over paris the whole world held their breath, from buenos aires to singapore to london, everything. and marched through. warsaw was almost totally destroyed. paris is barely touched. there you have the germans walking through a city that everyone had just visited last week or last month last year, a city that everyone loved. and it is the uniqueness that makes the story that i chose more convincing. i have to microphones up here. and for some reason they keep adjusting them. but anyway, that is a very good question. what about oz walled, copenhagen, rome? and i think my answer is that paris was -- i am prejudiced but i am also a historian. paris was special. in paris was not touched. they walked into paris without a shot being fired. yes. it is, sir. this to the men back here. >> i wonder if you could talk for a minute about the women, the perris in women who collaborated with the nazis, famous images of the women being marched to the street after liberation with their heads shaved. can you talk a little bit about the motivation and what happened afterwards. were they able to resume normal life as french women, or were they stigmatized for a long time? >> let me -- the last part is easy to answer. they were stigmatized, but there were eventually reach assimilated in society. many of them were treated unfairly. people knew that. women and a major role in the occupation because of the man were imprisoned. and therefore paris, which has always been considered a feminine city, was even more feminine at this time. it was the mothers who had to wait in line, the mothers who had to have the jobs, and in an intimate -- into an occupation -- and this was an end to an occupation which means that there were many, many jobs that a young woman would get working for the german occupation. a stenographer or working in a cafeteria or in a canteen or in some other way innocently just trying to make an income. there were also women who slept with german soldiers. the estimate is somewhere around two or 300,000 little fritz's were born during this time. there were called little for its is. the poor children suffered. many people, many young women when off for eight or nine months and then came back home either having left child someplace or left a child with a relative. so there were a lot of innocent sexual relations between young people. after all, many of these young women were teenagers, and many of the young german soldiers were teenagers or in their early 20's. that is all interesting story that deserves a lot of attention. when deliberation came everyone wanted to be on the side of the liberators. everyone was suddenly a member of the resistance. everyone wanted to a kid even with whoever it was who had caused them to have a horrible life. also people wanted to get even. and run a nice restaurant and had made some money for the german soldiers who had gone. and somebody wanted to get even with the mademoiselle because she had been nice to some german soldiers in had been seen walking down the street. so there are all kinds of patchy reasons, and there were real reasons that women were suddenly tried in a kangaroo trial, heads shaved , paraded half naked down the street with swastikas on the breast on their forehead. no man, you may be surprised to learn, were shaved and walked down the street. was mostly men and neighbors who did the shaving. post a very, very complicated time. it embarrassed americans to the point where the allies had to instruct american soldiers to stop it, if they could. was so embarrassing to see this happen, especially to married women and young girls. by the way, prostitutes to not get their heads shaved because they and a reputable professionals are only doing their job. it was only those -- it was not only those who has slept with the germans but those who had been intimate in business or any other way. for a while some of these poor women had to leave their villages. some of these poor people had to leave and then come back later. some were immediately received back into the community. two or three years later people realized the reasons for their having been humiliated or may not as obvious and justifiable. others left and never came back. and probably the most startling photographs of the liberation are those photographs of women being shaved. some of them then paraded nakedly, some of them they shave every part of hair on their body, softened they had to wear signs. it was not a pretty time. and it was primarily misogyny run amok. yes, sir. back here. >> considering the nancy proclivities' with regard to the art world, can you tell us about what happened with the museums and galleries and private collections? >> the nazis were great, to put it politely, collectors. they had already sent curators in the 30's all through europe to museums to take a census of any painting that could have been stolen from germany a hundred years ago or 200 years ago, in the painting that was german or flemish. as you know, there were some great flemish artists of the renaissance. they knew where every painting of importance in every museum they took over was. every painting that they could justify was of germanic origen was going to immediately be taken back to germany. it never -- heather had planned this in norman @booktv enormous museum in minsk, the tower he was born in austria. number two, the new the great collections of the jews, of the jewish, the owners of the great jewish galleries and amsterdam and of the cities. almost immediately after arriving u.n. right there. it did not make any difference. and this all a lot of these paintings on the open market in switzerland in order to get cash for the third reich besides that, there was a lot of art that they thought was to generate and jewish or influenced by jazz or by africans or african-americans. and a lot of that art was taken and put in to the museum, what used to be the museum of american temporary are, is now all moved to paris. and there they burned a lot of it, but they also were very canny. especially during did not have that kind of prejudice there he took a lot of it to sell. think during made something like -- i forget the number, like 20 or 30 trips on a special train to paris during this time. he took back a lot of art. fortunately a woman working here for four years kept track of every piece of art. you've seen the film monuments man, the story of this. of woman who was an extraordinarily kenny about keeping track of it. but the germans taste in art was kitsch, terrible. they had no taste. after all they did not know about a block grant. [laughter] but a lot of the germans were much more canny about the art and about the particular value of the arc. and one of the interesting things, stayed in paris during the occupation. here's a man who had already painted the most famous anti-war painting ever painted for the exposition in 1937 and in which he attacks the germans and italians for having bombed a little town and wiped out so many innocent people. and the germans, many germans consider him to be a jew. he was darker skinned, certainly spanish. he may have been a communist. he did become a communist after the war. and it this is one of the interesting stories. why did he stay? he was not the world's most courageous man, but he was one of the richest. he was well-known. his reputation to the point where germans visited him and went -- you can visit it today, went to a studio in paris. and they raided his lockbox where he had matisse and cezanne and everybody. they did not steal from him. i think there was two types -- several types of german attitudes toward art. he protected. in fact, a famous story. in his studio. he kept it. he later sent it out during the war. but one of the germans pointed at it. i can't remember. a big photograph. did you do this? no, you did. but the germans visited and protected him. he was never arrested. he survived the war without any undue discomfort. but the art now. the louvre had been emptied by the french before the germans got there. more lisa was spirited off. many of the great paintings had been spirited off by the french. when the germans got there there was nothing there but boring statues and empty walls. and then, for instance, when hitler made it tore he did not even stop. there was nothing there to see. the germans knew where most of the stuff was, but many of those museums in europe had been empty beaches the europeans realized that museums are vulnerable to air attack. many of the great museums and galleries, national gallery's or emptied and spread out over the country because of the fear of destruction. yes, sir. this gentleman here. that gentleman there. all right. that's a common air. a. >> can you hear? >> yes. >> obviously a writer. he stayed in paris during the war. >> part of the time. how the war affected him and his outlook on life and his later writings? and did he participate in their resistance at all? >> that was a good question. trying to get out of france. considered himself an algerian. french born, french family. controlled by the government. he wanted to get out of france, and he did for a while. he suffered terribly from tuberculosis. finally got back into france. his doctor recommended he go in. he went there, and in 1942 he published two of his most famous books. the germans allowed him to be published. a philosophical document about suicide and whether it makes sense to commit suicide with. and he published both these books -- the only thing he had to take out was a reference to a jew. so we add to take that out. the book was published. back to paris, and he came back and then went back down to breed a better. in toward the end of the occupation he went back and joined an underground movement which published a newspaper. a very active in resistance movements at the end of the war and certainly after the war became a major editor about everything from collaboration to resistance. he published in 1948 a book called the plague. about the bubonic plague which attacks the city in algeria. and that is, as far as i am concerned, an allegory for the grants that carried the body plague. a major novel about what we do when faced with evil and are locked inside the city. what they do is close the city off so that the play does not extend and people might be coming in and spreading it. what do you do when you close off from the world in areas and evil that you can't really come bad? how you deal with death? how you deal with ellis, how do you deal with those moments in your life when you have to make major moral decisions about the july report for instance that my child has the plague in order to keep it from spreading? so i think one of them agree to -- probably the greatest writer about the moral and ethical complexities of living under occupation. yes, sir. >> could you help us. >> i'll try. >> and explain what it was like for the jews under occupation? i don't think that we'll know exactly what it was like. >> i did not know what before i started. i tried not to make this book about the jews. a major chapter about the jewish experience. i wanted to show that there were not the only ones who lived in this environment of anxiety and tension and demoralization. there was no doubt that there were targets of nazi racial policy. we first have to a recognize that there were two kinds of jews at this time. there were immigrants many of them had fled to poland and germany during the 30's. what you see is this side of human freedom. the french were the first to give full civil-rights to jewish citizens. the right to vote, right to own property. so the french had this reputation. the french jews felt confident that their country would protect them. many of them had fallen. many were imprisoned in camps. the rangers were, of course, very nervous or apprehensive , as you should be. at first the effort -- the germans were very canny. the effort was to round up only immigrant and foreign issues. but it became quite clear right after the government was founded. if you remember, the french signed an armistice, the only nation to sign an armistice with germany and allowed to keep about half of its population, about half of its geography under french control, from 1940 to 1942. and they began because it was a government filled with anti-semites, passing laws very soon even before the germans asked him to. a strong strain of anti-semitism in france at that time, as there was in all of europe. anti-semitism is not a french disease. and at first the french jews thought there would be protected. the rich jews thought that the germans are only interested in the riffraff. the port used up that the germans were only interested in the rich use. and there were a lot of tension and the jurors can indeed. there were many who had become so assimilated that they did not even remember they were jewish. they needed these racial laws to be passed. it was not until 25 there were some roundups. generally french use or spare. mainly because the germans did not want to upset the french government because they needed the riches of france for their war machine. fr