Interesting. I think there were a great many people in France who helped gum up the works of the German occupation. I read in Gerturde Stein's Wars I Have Seen an anecdote about a French Jewish woman who had to register and when she went to the office the government clerk simply said something like, "I did not send for you," and so she left. I wish I could remember exactly how this conversation went but the point of it was he had no interest in doing the Nazi's dirty work and Gertrude Stein makes the claim that there were many people in official positions who had no respect for the German occupiers though they could not openly rebel against them. Stein was Jewish and she stayed along with Alice B. Toklas in Vichy France through the war. Ironically she was friends with Bernard Fey who was a major Nazi collaborator and government official who at the same time protected her. I think the history of France during this period is very interesting in the way they played both sides and managed to keep their country more or less intact.
Thanks for sharing, I’m definitely going to check out Stein’s book. That makes me wonder about other cases like Fey, who officially supported the Nazi regime but may have quietly opposed it.
Bernard Fey was prosecuted as a war criminal in France after the war and, weirdly, Alice B Toklas, Gerturude's lover and defacto wife, spent her own money to hire somebody to break him out of jail and escape France. I have read that during the Nazi occupation he was put in charge of identifying Freemasons having them arrested and sent to camps where many of them perished, so I do not think Fey was anything like Rene Carmille. I went on a little Gertrude Stein reading binge last year because I was intrigued by her theories about creative writing and poetry and that led me to her autobiographical works, which I think are her best books (the most readable). The anecdote I mentioned was in Wars I Have Seen I think but I'm not 100% sure because there's a lot of overlap in the four books (that I know of) she wrote about her life. Besides WIHS, there's Paris France, and the two Autobiographies: Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, and Everybody's Autobiography. But if you read her stuff be prepared. She is discursive as hell and writes in a semi-controlled stream of consciousness which I enjoy but it's a sort of cultivated taste that a lot of people can't get into.
Interesting. I think there were a great many people in France who helped gum up the works of the German occupation. I read in Gerturde Stein's Wars I Have Seen an anecdote about a French Jewish woman who had to register and when she went to the office the government clerk simply said something like, "I did not send for you," and so she left. I wish I could remember exactly how this conversation went but the point of it was he had no interest in doing the Nazi's dirty work and Gertrude Stein makes the claim that there were many people in official positions who had no respect for the German occupiers though they could not openly rebel against them. Stein was Jewish and she stayed along with Alice B. Toklas in Vichy France through the war. Ironically she was friends with Bernard Fey who was a major Nazi collaborator and government official who at the same time protected her. I think the history of France during this period is very interesting in the way they played both sides and managed to keep their country more or less intact.
Thanks for sharing, I’m definitely going to check out Stein’s book. That makes me wonder about other cases like Fey, who officially supported the Nazi regime but may have quietly opposed it.
Bernard Fey was prosecuted as a war criminal in France after the war and, weirdly, Alice B Toklas, Gerturude's lover and defacto wife, spent her own money to hire somebody to break him out of jail and escape France. I have read that during the Nazi occupation he was put in charge of identifying Freemasons having them arrested and sent to camps where many of them perished, so I do not think Fey was anything like Rene Carmille. I went on a little Gertrude Stein reading binge last year because I was intrigued by her theories about creative writing and poetry and that led me to her autobiographical works, which I think are her best books (the most readable). The anecdote I mentioned was in Wars I Have Seen I think but I'm not 100% sure because there's a lot of overlap in the four books (that I know of) she wrote about her life. Besides WIHS, there's Paris France, and the two Autobiographies: Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, and Everybody's Autobiography. But if you read her stuff be prepared. She is discursive as hell and writes in a semi-controlled stream of consciousness which I enjoy but it's a sort of cultivated taste that a lot of people can't get into.