i wanted to work on the rise of national socialism and then i encountered the story of the resistance. the william shire rise and fall of such books. [inaudible] i wanted to write my own history. but i still ask myself the same question they mismanaged the 16th. but they have managed it any better? i still wonder. >> was that at the end of it the german resisted or how was the german resistance discovered and became to an end? >> after the bomb exploded in july 1944, the military leader staged a coup d'état. they gave orders to people throughout germany. so they came into the opening period theater conspirator reached in one case a diary that they were able to find. the diaries usually included i'm a very clumsy. my favorite example through as a conspirator, he was the chief of police, had the village. so i diaries he consistently mentions dart down. certainly it was not difficult to find them in very few ways that do survive. that is one of the reasons we know so much about the group. and all the suicide bombers -- [inaudible] >> and found that the military high-ranking officials and the ghettos and concentration camps. did they also know about the death camps? >> certainly people in higher rank in the leaders of the army did not know they know but actually called. is the final solution really under the shooting squad, which were assisted by the army were even involved in the massacre. and they signed an order to children for slavery in germany. in a few days there was going to be in a coup d'état. serving with the eastern front for everyone. thank you very much. [applause] >> danny orbach. thanks, everyone. [inaudible conversations] >> on the program chair and i really want to say how delighted i am to be introducing train the lab and to the audience for the third time. that is a record. before adidas honors, however, however, i want to let you know that someone's has been marked as not in the auditorium this morning. having viewed the talks and 20 times, he declined number 21. he's going to use his time to review the collection of intimacy and, which is very good use of his time and something is really going to enjoy. many of you will remember chewing environment who spoke to us on the anniversary and to test your memory even further, you may recall how that came about. i'm not going to retell the story. i just want you to know is to the generosity of spirit and introduction we were able to arrange chewing his appearance here. he will be in the rotunda and thank him for accepting the conversation. i have a question for you. how did you form your impression of parent during the occupation? think about that. allen's first or perhaps kristin hannah's latest book called the nightingale. all fiction, for sure. and you remember the bits and pieces, but those were fiction. there's so much more to this story than what you can read in a novel. just as he did when he was writing the biography and did a massive amount of research, films, books, diaries, letters, official documents. all the things they have a nonfiction book about this. she given tot two men and women who are still alive today and the experiences and those of his loved ones. i will resist the temptation to go any further. she's well-prepared to friday. she studied history and diversity before going off to rome became to be a bbc reporter and professor. the acclaimed biographies of the jimmy churchville as well as that woman. today she's going to talk about how the women of parents lived, loved and died during the train six occupation. we are happy to have you back. please welcome her. >> thank you, gail. that's a generous introduction. i can't tell you how thrilled i am to be here for the third time is very exciting to me. i'm going to assume among stand telogen audience that you are the love be reasonably familiar with the history of world war ii and specifically in the occupation of paris by train six. so you know they were three principles in this story. i am going to tell you as little about them as i can possibly manage. this is a women's story. it is a story of how women manage to survive in the dark days of the train six occupation and encompasses women such as future ea, jewelers, actors, dancers, singers and all of the women who found themselves in the situation and a myriad response is to the occupation by an enemy. why hasn't it been addressed before? why has it taken so long to experiment this diverse range of responses to the enemy. this picture helps to understand because it was taken in 2015 that last year. last year, the president a lot and let us not impugned. he of his motive decided it was time to breathe very two of the most famous women resistant and france's secular temple to the grace and good and it has carved on the pediment outside to the great man of france, a great fatherland. not surprising perhaps until last year only one woman was buried there in her own right, mary curry. what you see in this picture, draped over a coffin is not actually the body to go who is denise at the general, not the daughter. they decided that actually they're great deeds that have been actually they agreed for in their graves being carried to the pant in. nonetheless, it was a pretty major change how it had been viewed. i suppose then that came out why it's taken so long, very many reasons, but the main reason is that female hair was done simply didn't fit the myth that general could start date when he returned to paris in the summer 1944 among the other reasons are women natural modesty if you'd like. they didn't want to talk about the awful times that they've lived through. they wanted to push it behind them. they wanted to establish some kind of normalcy in their life and perhaps get. enough children. they also found that they were struggling in a deeply patriarch who society to be recognized. and here you see women demonstrating before the war for the right to vote. women in france until 1946. women couldn't have their own rank accounts and couldn't have a job without the permission of a father or has been. this is a key element to the background of this book, but i really have to say this is not women's history. this is made chewing history. this is the history. the other piece of background is france's complicated relationship with its jewish population. in the wake of napoleon onward. and so from eastern europe to france because this was the country of the enlightenment. they thought they would have a homeland in france and because of the large numbers in france, many french had a complicated response in their number i still know from that case of course. he was what brought them to france but didn't always find it. this picture explains what is known as the french paradox that is solemnly approximately 76,000 were deported during the war as the total population on the eve of war at 330,000. so you can do the math that's approximately a quarter. what one has to explain this on the one hand by with a 76,000 deported and not as the action of the sovereign government, french police at the time they were deported arguably didn't have the manpower, but were far too occupied prosecuting the war. but how come so many survive and the reason for that is to respond as many good individual french catholics, protestants or thoughts of religions. .. the story that adorned their with about this woman who used the born raquel vancleave. she changed her name to the more fragile sounding renee. she married a racing driver and she became -- a good freshening. her mother was esther and changed her name to a spell. but the vancleave family and the our pal who were cousins were both jewish. they tried and fell -- to try to assimilate what they were really the johnny-come-lately of the platform. they were constantly trying to compete with cartier and to come up with newer settings, the ministry settings, more exotic stones. in 1938 racquel inherited this company from her father your in 1940 when the germans occupied, all jewish companies had to be owned by an area and are a christian. she decided to area nice the parish branch but actually to take a heavy suitcase full of stock down to the spot where they already had a boutique and continue the copy because she thought i know all the government leaders there, their wives, mistresses and children all my friends. all be fine there. i'll just keep the company going, and she particularly believed that the daughter of the prime minister that actually she would not only be fine and the company would flourish but she would be protected. as i learned that day in paris, in fact she suddenly felt exposed. in december 1942 she threw herself out of a window and committed suicide. it was hearing that story that hooked me into wanting to understand more at all sorts of levels. i wanted to know what it was that suddenly triggered a confident successful young businesswoman to feel that she had no future. i wanted to understand why it was that jewelry and clothing and set them up in theater, and fine dining, fine life generally could flourish in wartime, at the same time as other people were dying and starving and hiding in fear of retaining their lives. and it was this light and dark that really was what propelled me into this story, and i hope you'll see some of that as i now go through the individual stories. so in 1939 on the give of war men in paris believed that there couldn't possibly be a war. and if there was going to be war, that the french would win very swiftly and the germans would be defeated. they had their faith. so this is a realistic circus ball enormously extravagant elephants and ponies and jugglers and acrobats which went on until the small hours. i just want to draw attention to address because it's relevant to the story. can you see the embroidery, the butterflies, this sequence, addressed by the american designer who quickly came back to america. the significance of her dress is that when the germans occupied, hitler wanted to take parisiennes couture back to germany. utensil to take the designs because there's a whole army of women behind them on who the designers depend. and by that he meant the women who are specialists in embroidery, and these skills were terribly important to the industry coming to probably saved not only the jobs by the lives of 25,000 women by keeping the industry in france. so from then on it was important to find ways for the industry to exist and to survive. and even the germans played along with that because they knew that actually was important for german wise to buy close affair and to keep the population quiet and happy. you will see how that plays out in the course of this talk. just one other thing, the very beautiful woman at the bottom, aimee, was wearing a very early christian dior gown but before he had his own label. he worked at the time for others. the other thing that changed in paris in 1939 at the outbreak of war was that the french were terrified it would be a chemical attack, i guess attack. so everyone had gas masks and the designers quickly caught on and be very expensive luxurious cylindrical shaped bags to hold the gas masks in. and you can see one of them here. and just as an indication of a terribly fashionable they were, in latin america where there was no war and no threat of war, these cylindrical bags became absolutely -- every woman wanted to be as fashionable as her parisiennes sisters. the other pictures interesting because the shops build shelters very quickly. but look at that woman's some stockings. because if parisiennes women could wear trousers, they had to find a stockings. just was not acceptable to go out barelegged. so coarse silk stockings ran a racing incident and were mashed which could be mended a few time. window something else, parisiennes women learn how to apply iodine to the likes. if you had a particularly straight and/or a kind friend you could paint a straight line of the back to imitate the seems. typically on the eve of war, many women get married or divorced. and they told me how they did a boring trade, in engagement rings on the eve of war because many parisiennes women decided when it's my man is going off to the front, he may be killed, at least i can claim a pension if i have an engagement ring. so many engagement rings. but this particular woman in the wedding dress is not only one of my real heroines in the story but i think her story is really emblematic of the many parisiennes women on each of war, unable to find fulfillment, according to the law. they actually played a far greater role in society than the law allowed them once more took over their lives. so she was married at 19, he almost an arranged marriage. she came from -- much identified as french. her family had been in france for a long time. her husband was an antique dealer who, like many parisiennes men, had a number of mistresses and women friends and so we didn't really see why the marriage should change any of that. so on the eve of war, we find her deeply unhappy. she's even visiting a psychiatrist to understand yourself. why does she feel so unfulfilled? they had a child who was 10 but the child was looked after a governess. so she really had very little to do, and i'm pleased to tell you that she found fulfillment during the war, not only did she join the resistance and played a major role as we will hear, but she also when she moved had a passionate love affair with a communist trade union leader who was the leader of the sailors union last night it didn't end happily but we will come to it in due course. the other woman was a jewish polish refugee and she represented those jews in france who didn't have french nationality and/or absolutely terrified. she and her family knew only too well what fate awaited them. she had a fiancé in london who begged her to come to london and leave paris and married him, and she declined because she said i have elderly parents. i have to stay with them. in fact, her mother was dying of cancer. so she was passed at the beginning of the war with finding pieces for the family group that comprised simply three of them. and by the end it swelled to 12. for the next 18 months she went to every consul and conflict that some kind of power to grant exit visas and she was constantly propositioned in terms of being invited to have sex or hand over her jewelry. she tells the story there in his family in her unpublished memoirs but eventually she found a council is able to grant 12 exit visas to her family. and they spent the war actually in an internment camp in jamaica. so it wasn't an easy war for her, but on the other hand, they survived. so in june 1940, as i'm sure you all know, the french were defeated very swiftly. it was a classic blitzkrieg. so the germans occupied paris and a number of changes were noticed almost immediately. the flags with swastikas. you must recognize this as the root and the gardens over there where the french is suddenly have to start growing vegetables. there were a number of other changes. the germans introduced a curfew which varied between 10, 11, 12, depending on how quietly situation was. they change the exchange rates. obviously, favorably to the germans. so although the terms of the armistice involved a large amount of money being paid over and goods being supplied or looted, it also became very difficult for french people to buy anything because they were so expensive. but there's something else about this picture. it's yuri emptiness. because 2 million men were taken as a prisoner of war. many other men left if they could, young men of fighting age to join to go to london. so paris became a feminist city. you didn't see young men of fighting age on the street but it was the women who on a daily basis have to decide, on how to end her out with the german occupiers. and sleazy women on a bicycle because private cars also disappeared. there was no fuel. and just look at the woman there with her large turbine. because that's the other thing your shampoo soon disappeared so how were women made to look smart if they couldn't wash their hair? they made a virtue of necessity and the turbine became very fashionable. at the bigger the better. if we didn't have big bouffant hair you stop the trouble with older newspaper. so parisiennes women from the start decided being stylish was a response that bordered on resisting the germans. remaining fashionable was going to be terribly important for the. they were not going to be ground into the dust. the germans of course thought that coming to paris was a prize posting. of course, it was better than being sent to the eastern front. you see one of the reasons why it was so it citing. when hitler came to power he only came once by the way, but he recognized it was a jewel. it was a prize and that's what it was kept as an open city, and he wanted everything to carry on just as it was. that wasn't the illusion he was trying to create. he made this comment -- every german should have the chance to come to paris at least once. and as you see this is only one of the delights in paris. this particular booklet that you're looking at was privately printed. it was never published but it was a guide to officers, and probably there were only about 100 of these ever produced. i was told about one that existed in an erotic bookshop, and i was told that if i went i simply couldn't go on my own. you have to make an appointment. so i went with my husband who you heard refer to earlier. he thought doing research with the was absolutely wonderful. [laughter] and perhaps i could arrange some more research for him. but there is a very serious point to this picture because the germans recognize that although the military defeat had been easy, or have to of the kinds of defeat in store for them that the prostitutes might have. finally before we leave this, you could hardly see the small print which says -- in other words, it's the choice, but the choice for the main. there was no choice for the women. i think of any group of women has really not have their story told, it's the french prostitutes. and many other brothels actually doubled as resistance houses. it wasn't only a fine for the german men. of course, there were lots of german female soldiers who came. formerly under former governor and as auxiliaries but different sisters often called them great. that's when they're being polite, when they were less polite they call them officers mattresses. [laughter] as you can see, for them there is was a delight. they could find the products that had already disappeared off the shelves and german jobs. any of the photographs you can see how initially the first wave of the german soldiers were handsome, charming and polite. as long as the nazi soviet pact was in existence, the communists had their hands tied behind their back and couldn't resist. so to begin with everything was calm. there were no random assassinations and no reprisals in the first year, but that didn't last for long. the theater was one of the jewels that hitler wanted to keep, and it's the french national theatre, and it barely stop for more than a few days. but this woman is another one of my heroines. she was not jewish and decided almost immediately that she couldn't possibly perform in a company that didn't allow jewish actors and the did not allow the work of jewish playwrights to be performed. so she left which was not merely giving up her job. it was giving up her life pension, and she followed the fate of this man who was her lover, who was the politician who actually churchill had hoped would come to england, not a lanky tall man that nobody had heard of, but all. but he said he couldn't come. he could leave france because he was jewish and he would be accused of cowardice and assertion. so sure enough he was arrested and went from one prison camp to another. and shoe was not only visiting him in the camps and taking in food, she was looking after his orphaned daughter. but at the end she wrote him desperately poignant letter begging him to marry her, and he declined because he said he knew what his fate would be and he did want her to share. and sure enough when he was transferred from one camp to another, he was assassinated. i admire her especially special addition to all that because after the war, the call came to want to lay a wreath on his grave and she fired off such an angry letter saying how fair you when you did nothing during his lifetime to help them escape or to give him pashtun we needed and you could've done something. so hell hath no fury i suppose. the other woman who i interviewed, i interviewed her when she was only 100 as you see in this picture she still alive today at 102. she acted at the comedy throughout the war. it's interesting to look at the different choices that women made. she insisted that i live in problem after every performance saying she had to get home to her children and be home before the curfew, she never had to have to accept a drink with any of the german soldiers in the audience. but it really was a complicated choice, if you were a performer. i think artists have particularly suffered because it's so visible. they performed on stage to a sea of gray green uniforms as you see in the nightclub here. but just to give you an idea of how complex it was, look at the other picture of that group of artists, including even if in germany in front of the brandenburg gate. cd was a young south african jewish dancer who had a childhood ambition to dance. she was accepted in 1939 and a secular, weight in paris and we will come by and pick you up. but, of course, were made that impossible. so she was trapped in paris and she was taken in by the nightclub that was particularly pro resistance. daytrader as their style of dancer. she was very successful and they give for a false identity. she was told that she had to go to germany in 1943. it was one of these sponsored tours to think of french prisoners of war, but the whole idea was to proclaim to the world what a benign occupation and not the -- not the occupation was. but given the should not want to go because she's jewish, she was told that she didn't go not only would she go her own cover but should make it very dangerous for those of her friends at home. and edith has often been accused of collaboration because of his trick she made a she argued that she delivered had herself photographed with german soldiers so that she could cut out the images, the faces of the german soldiers and use them to create false identity cards for french prisoners of war. i don't think it can be proved at this point either way. certainly performing was complicated. and here you see the french soloist. you can imagine that this photograph is not going to speak well for her after the war. if you can hear, this is just a clip, i don't know if it can go any louder, of her singing. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i would love to play for. i think it's gorgeous but he boards a plane it is because i think it's so provocative. you understand that her voice -- all the years and she put into training and she's picked out as a young student for having a favorite special voice. and even hitler, although i'm not sure was a particular arbiter, said she was the finest he has ever heard. but in 1938 when she sang, the french were only too happy to claim her because of course at that point it was wonderful to have a french soloist who was singing wagner for the first time. but during the war she continued to saying at the opera house in paris. here you see with the very young herbert who came over with the opera. she also german friends in the german love. after the war of course she's going to pay a heavy price for being seen on stage and arguably for collaborating. the germans believed that opera was their own independent art form. they spent six and a half thousand francs on tickets for the opera in four years of the occupation a loan. so to perform on the stage in front of all these the germans was never going to be easy to argue that you were not in someway contributing to the solution of the benign occupation. she was sent to prison for about three years and then she was sentenced to a new crime of public humiliation. she was stripped of her citizenship. her house was taken and she was sent into exile. by the time she came back in the 50s, she was a humiliated performer. she couldn't it work on stage. she caught the singing, but really her career was totally finished. f. years after that she committed suicide. it wasn't all the artists who had to make a choice, a decision, but if you ran a business unit decisions all the time because the germans insisted that any jewish business had to be handed over to christian owner. as you see in these leaflets there were many shops that were going, that were indeed a waiting for somebody to take them over. i have seen many letters signed a good french housewife. i could run this business if you allow me to. but some election now, of course, was not jewish although she didn't have to give up but she chose to close down her boutique on the eve of war. she said warm, it was not a suitable time to continue running their business. she opted for a much easier life in the ribs with her much younger and some german lover. i don't actually believe she was a traitor. she did behave badly in trying to regain ownership of are very lucrative perfume business. in the 1920s in order to fund the business she had taken in money as an investment from the jewish brothers. she thought that was my chance, i can claim it back. but actually the brothers were a step ahead of her and they had already aryanize to it. so she wasn't able to do that. she continued fighting and to after the war. he was a very astute lawyer and in the end she was given a larger share of the perfume business really because it was easier to grant her that animator so immensely wealthy that she never needed to work again. jewelry was a particularly difficult one because buying stocks of jewelry demanded a lot of capital. this woman who use the was one of the most talented jewelers of her generation and wallis simpson was a customer of hers, of course. she never signed her pieces. she said my style is my signature. i don't need to sign family. bought in order to buy the raw materials, the man who invested in her company prewar was bernard acts and he also fell in love with suzanne. so during the occupation, although she tried to buy the company back in on herself she was betrayed and accused of false area musician and bernard was arrested and he was sent to the holding station for parisiennes jews before they were shipped to auschwitz and he was indeed taken to auschwitz where he was killed. but not before he wrote one of the most poignant letters that i think i have in my book where he says how he's so sorry for all the trouble that he's caused suzanne but he doesn't regret staying in paris for as long as he did because it shortened the time that he was away from her. in understanding the question that i oppose right at the beginning, why does jewelry flourish in time of war, why is it that women want to buy items of jewelry at such a terribly difficult time for so many others? there are a number of reasons, and although from looking at the file cards of van cleef and arpels now it certainly was not only the german soldiers who were buying, it was also the french. and i begin to understand this when i went in to discuss it with the archivist who showed me these objects. in order to have any jewelry made during the war you had to taking the exact weight of metal for the new object you want it created. because there just were not supplies. in fact, there was something in platinum, you had to taken 1.5 times the weight. so she said many women were so aggrieved at the way they believed their husbands had let them down, had humiliated him, had forced them into this situation that they would sometimes take in the family silver, the family, rate and had it melted down into a new evening bag for them to wear to show that they were absolutely on the top of fashion. these evening bag's worth particularly shocking because inside they had compartments for powder and lipstick. and prewar for a wellborn parisiennes woman to make up in public was absolutely unacceptable. so what these women were declaring was not only that they knew exactly what was the most fashionable kind of evening bag but they were going to do something really shocking opening it up and putting their makeup on in public. here's another way parisiennes women try to remain fashionable. they would have their mesh stockings mended and mended until they could be made to do more. window was no allow the and they could be reduced to wearing cork shoes, they would cover their shoes in fabric. here's an example of real economic collaboration. generally i don't actually like the word collaboration. it was the word invented by marshall himself when he agreed to terms of the armistice. but i think for women in paris mostly it was a question of being complicit, collusion, or doing that you. but this is real economic collaboration because it's a question of keeping the factories are going, giving work to the designers number when they were no longer imports of cotton and wool. what on earth are you going to make these new clothes out of? so they came up with a fabric which was totally synthetic. we called it rayon today but they gave it a pretty day. it was made from cellulose, from putting trees which of the germans provided in the french designers created something that you see here. on the catwalk it looked wonderful but it was a disaster if you washed it. it shrunk to half its size. [laughter] and is another way they tried to find work for the designers. they created something called day of elegance on a bicycle. there was a competition for the designer who came up with the best outfit for women to wear on their bicycles that they couldn't wear kosher spirit actually what you see are what we would probably call divided skirts. of course, they were treasures but probably with a flap over but the women to look very pretty wearing them. once ration was introduced many women found they didn't have enough coupons for a whole dress, but at least they could buy lingerie so it made him feel better. and then the government introduced the compulsory wearing of a yellow star if you were jewish, and this used up three textile coupons. i think any picture during my research, that has really made me think how would i behave, it's probably this picture. because i find the look of shock all those women important. i find the fact that these two women in the front are holding hands probably to give him courage, and i do quote a story in my book of a man who crossed the road delivery and shook hands and said i want to behave like a good catholic, and i want to shake your hand and show you that i don't approve of this. now, wearing a yellow star of course was one of the choices that jewish women had to make, should they go into hiding, should they not registered, or do they just decide actually there's nothing to be ashamed of, i'm going to wear it. it would lead to their arrest. and irene, the russian born author did wear a yellow staff budgeted identify as jewish. she didn't feel jewish. she felt deeply french. she loves france. she studied and she wrote in french. she's really a very good example of the french paradox that i talked about at the beginning. accounts or publishers were no longer able to pay her as a jewish writer so she moved out of paris to a village in burgundy with her two children and husband, and she devised a scheme whereby the governess was the. she pretended of the governess was writing the stories and in the governess paid her. that lasted for a bit but then she was arrested. she was arrested by two french policemen. but the reason i say it's the french paradox is because she gave to her children a suitcase with the manuscript in it, a manuscript which we now know as -- those children were looked after by a variety of french individuals. they were passed from individuals in the resistance to conference and to schools, and eventually in the 21st century that notebook that they carried around was published. i think it is a masterpiece and i think unquestionably we lost a great writer. i just wanted to show you this still from the film, because i think what it shows is how terribly clearly irene nemirovsky understood the difficulties for women coming face-to-face with the german occupiers, particularly as in her book when the germans bulletin and what she's trying to show was that not all germans were beasts. some of them were cultured and civilized men who really did not want to be doing what they were forced to do. irene nemirovsky was rounded up in 1942, and she died shortly afterwards of typhoid. in operation spring wind. operation spring wind was part of a big round up in 1942 where most of the jews were rounded up in paris. it's known as -- because they were taken. it's this really that the french were responsible. the french gave the germans more than as for and particularly the germans have not asked for children are among the 4000 children there was one as young as 18 months in this round up. and it was unbelievably unsuitable for a few hours, let alone for five days, which some of the jews rounded up were left there for that length of time. so it's this particular episode that is often known as france's shane. because for so many years there unable to accept responsibility until finally in 1995 jacques chirac did except french responsibility for the crime, and what you see here is the monument after that. the curb side represents the bench with the jews were left to try and fit with hardly any facilities, toilets and no food. so after the round up in paris in 1942 there was hardly anybody who did not know somebody who had been taken. and that's when the resistance really got going and the women decided that they may not be able to register with the resistance, a network, but there were things they could do nonetheless, which were equally courageous and dangerous. you see the woman putting leaflets under the door, that was totally important to both to the resistance to show the allied landing was underway or was being planned, but it was dangerous because if you put under the wrong door and you could be traced, you would certainly be arrested. de gaulle maintained they had not been registered to an official resistance group. they probably had not carried weapons, therefore they ha havet fought in combat. they were not -- what i tried to do in my book issue as many women as possible who actually did have weapons. this lovely young smiling woman, marie-france, actually cycled around normandy with explosives strapped to her chest, and she made bombs on her kitchen table. she survived, and i know her daughter in london who has said to me, i just wish my mother had told her stories. so that's another reason why many of these women have not had their heroic deeds recognized. they just didn't talk about them. so now back to the woman you saw at the beginning in the wedding dress. here she is in her suit which she wore the day she went to meet with the leader of the sailors union. she wrote that she actually went armed with a copy of karl marx book under arm as well. they felt passionate and love and he charged her with a particular out, to go to vichy because he said we need money in the resistance, and to understand jewelry. dutcher world. here's a diamond. we don't know how he got hold of it, but here's a diamond, try to sell and bring back the money. so odette went to visit her friend, trying -- renee and try to give a much more money than the diamond was worth. a truly heroic deed. it was a few days after that that she threw itself out of the window. odette went back and she and pierre were betrayed and picked up short after that. on the way to prison they held hands, sing, proclaimed undying love. when the war is over of courseware going to get married and everything will be wonderful. that sustains them both during their time in different camps. he was sent to the salt mines, which he did survive just. and she was sent to ravens broke which she did survive, but only just. so i've been talking a lot about vichy and i just think it needs one word of explanation. because it's so hard to understand how all this could be going on in paris. but in vichy where they made the loss it was vichy with the statutes against the jews were created, but vichy at the same time as declaring in paris was a debauched capital and only in vichy was a big purity, they were trying to undergo a social revolution at the same time. social resolution alongside the deeply anti-semitic laws and they actually declared a model for vichy couldn't -- so what you see in this poster, they're persuading women to stay at home, not to work but to release them in if they still had a has been at home and send them to work in a german factory on behalf of the nazis. once the laws against the jews were created in vichy, it was a small step towards arresting, and after the arrest the houses or apartments were often alluded. by 1943 it was evident that the allies invasion was underway. they were preparing it. nobody quite knew win. so churchill decided to send back to bolster the french resistance women who were generally why and large they had been poor in paris, they were parisiennes. they volunteered. they were highly idealistic women and defensive back as part of the special operations executive. they were not spies. they were there to try and help the resistance. many of them were wireless operators and he knew that their life expectancy was probably only six weeks if they were a wireless operator. and among the 39 theme operatives, most were killed -- female operatives. this picture of princess nora who was half american, half indian, with such an idealist but she was a musician. she wrote children's fairytales. you think how unsuitable she was, in fact incredibly brave she was murdered. finally, the liberation comes in the summer of 1944, and the women are very keen to play a part in whatever way they can. there is of course joined in the liberation. bis data you see getting married was a czech refugee called robert maxwell, as he renamed himself. he became a british newspaper magnate but he came to paris briefly and fell in love with the parisiennes teacher. and being the clever me he was he was able to form her wedding dress from a dow downed parachu. but the other side of the liberation is at this. although i've been telling you the stories of many heroic women, of course there was collaboration and a lot of black market activity as well. and according to some estimates there were 200,000 franco-german babies born picture that's quite a lot of -- but the thousands of women who found themselves having their heads shaved in revenge attacks were not given any kind of trial. this was by and large the return of the angry man, and some of these women had formed a genuine romantic relationships, and some of them had slept with the germans in order to acquire a crust of bread for the children. many of them were paraded semi naked or with tattoos of swastikas on their forehead. so some of the women returning, they felt they just wanted to merge into normal society as quickly as possible. like this woman, she joined the resistance, went to ravens broke. mealey wrote an account of it which was probably the first account and then she came to england, married an englishman, had children and never wanted to talk about it again. the other woman in uniform, you may be aware of you seen in the so-called the monuments men which is played by kate blodgett, rogue ally trying to seduce george clooney. [laughter] but her star is much more interesting than that. she had always wanted to be a curator but because she was a woman she couldn't formally be a curator so should get a curator's job. and when the germans were looting art, she positioned herself and took a note of all the paintings that passed through, which helped her after the war locate many of them, thanks to her arduous, assiduous work. but why was she not recognized? probably because she was a lesbian and she lived with another woman, an english woman translator. so first story someone didn't fit the macho male model of resistance. and women were punished genuinely. this is a film actresses were her father. her father was executed. he ran a pro-vichy newspaper. she was sentenced also to 10 years, but she died of tb before completing her since. but she was visibly living the life of, she had many german friends as well as benefiting from the black market, thanks to her father's activities. so she was always unpopular with resistant groups. and inevitably would suffer. during her trial she said my heart is french but my ass is international. [laughter] she was always going to be forgiven because she was so popular. the other woman who you see is the reverse of the coin, giving evidence of the tribulation she had faced. and this woman is a good example of how women try to make ends meet after the war. she had been an ravens broke. her husband was killed and so she had no money but in order to stay in the town apartment she took in paying guests who are mostly americans, the most famous being aghast that she took in was jacqueline bouvier. she was covered under parisiennes stock msha always said it's thanks to my year in paris. the other woman who came to paris in 1949 was the wave of diplomats and bureaucrats. i'm sure you recognize isn't julia child and she made parisiennes cooking famous cuisine. so they decide as soon as the allies landed that they wanted to establish the dominance again of the french haute couture industry because they recognized in the war that casual american clothes have started to make headway with women who liked the ideas that being comfortable. so first of all they invented this, the miniature haute couture with the jewels and design, sets designed and it traveled the world proclaiming that haute couture is french or it is nothing. and in 194 1947 to send your cap with a new look but, of course, although the use rains and rains of fabric, i'm not sure that was very new because it set women back to the home wearing corsets and these outfits were sorely not designed for women who wanted to lead an active working life. at one of the shows his sister catherine had been in the resistance and that suffered, the shows when she came out. so why did she never tell her story? why was she so private about it? she fell in love with a married man who you see here who was not only married. he had children, but their traditional catholic society from which he came meant that he could not get a divorce. so after the war she continued living with them in sin and that meant that she couldn't openly talk about the resistance work. so i'm really thrilled to give voice to her now. and the new look was not popular with everybody because the shortages in paris were really severe steel after the war. and it was deemed so unsuitable for ordinary women who are still struggling. produced this approach which proclaimed the parisiennes woman is now free and they were able to vote in national elections in 1946. but i want to finish with this, just to remind you of so many of these women started the war with their fashionable gas mask holders in stockings and i finished the war building roads in ravensbruck. and if i was ever in doubt, which often was, in how i would define what it makes, what defines a true parisiennes, is it understanding your fate? because it is certainly not the simplistic view that is being parisiennes is simply superficially looking stylish at all times. and the woman on the left was sent to ravensbruck and never understood why she was sent in error, because she was not jewish and she was divorced. she couldn't recognize that it was because of a name she had carried that she was picked up by the germans, and she died in ravensbruck. ..

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