They met in the Vichy-run Gurs concentration camp, in southwestern France. It was the winter of 1940. She was 16, he was 19. “There were many artists imprisoned in Gurs,” Hanne Liebmann reflects today, in her Queens home. “We had a cultural life there, despite the circumstances. They would organize concerts.” Hanne Hirsch had been…
Visiting the new Louis Vuitton exhibit “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez”, I was struck by the way the exhibit valorizes Mr. Louis Vuitton, positioning his progress as parallel to many great technological innovations like the car and airplane. Louis Vuitton’s personal history is mythologized at the exhibit in service of the brand, with the story of the…
Leftist French leader Jean Luc Mélenchon has said France bears no responsibility for the actions of the pro-Nazi Vichy government during the Holocaust, according to Haaretz — echoing the remarks of far right wing leader Marine le Pen. Mélenchon rejected President Emmanuel Macron’s assertion on Sunday that France bore responsibility for helping the Nazis roundi up…
In 1931, New York City honored a French war hero with a ticker-tape parade up Broadway. In 1940, that French war hero became leader of the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis. In 2017, there’s still a plaque commemorating his parade in the middle of New York City. Now, New York State Assemblyman Dov…
I was reading the hard news, aka the Zara website. Something caught my eye in the “trend” section: Vichy. Specifically, #vichy. Um. Why, I wondered, is Vichy trending? Does this have anything to do with Marine le Pen and the resurgence of the French far-right? If you go to the “vichy” trend page, what appears…
It is widely known that James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” was not autobiographical. For one thing, the book’s protagonist Leopold Bloom was Jewish, and Joyce was raised as an Irish Catholic. However, in 1940, when Joyce attempted to flee Vichy France to Switzerland during World War II, the Swiss government thought that he was Jewish. More…
A glance at the current best-seller list in France reminds us that not only will we always have Paris, we will also always have Vichy. Eric Zemmour’s “Le France Suicide” has just elbowed aside Valérie Trierweiler’s memoir of her (short) time as the partner of President François Hollande, “Merci Pour Ce Moment,” as the country’s…
The 1940, Nazi invasion of France turned that country’s musical scene into a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Music in Paris During the Occupation,”) a book recently released in France, allows readers to draw conclusions about how music world celebrities behaved in difficult times. Edited by Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon,…
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