ONLINE CLASS: Survival and Recovery in Post-War France

France was under Nazi occupation from 1940-45. This was a time of great privation and suffering for the French: it is a period of time that has left its mark on the people in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. In this class we will learn about how the French people began to put their lives—and their country—back together after the war. First, to provide us with some background we’ll read Alan Riding’s And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris, which covers the years of the Occupation and a bit of the immediate postwar period. Next we’ll read Janet Flanner’s Paris Journal 1944-1955. This New Yorker correspondent’s contemporary accounts of key events in the postwar period, from the return of prisoners from camps in Germany and Poland to the trials of Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval will provide us with an extremely sharp and compelling eyewitness view of these historic events, as well as many details about what everyday life was like for Parisians in the postwar aftermath. Finally we’ll read and discuss The Plateau. In this award-winning book, we’ll learn about how anthropologist Maggie Paxson set out to study what would make a group of people choose selflessness, even at the cost of great personal sacrifice and danger. Delving into the history of a village in a remote pocket of Nazi-held France where ordinary people risked their lives to rescue hundreds of strangers, mostly Jewish children, her exploration leads to some compelling questions: How did a whole community of people choose to respond to evil with good? And what can we learn from what happened there and then, that applies to us today? 

Five Fridays: September 30, October 7, (skip October 14) October 21, (skip October 28) November 4, November 11, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. ET Online