Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (15 page)

We are confronted here with one of the most difficult and delicate questions of interpretation in history. It must be shocking to find the name of Auschwitz so early and so often mentioned in the German documentation of this period. But what did it mean then to those who freely used it? The notion—or perhaps the pretense—that Auschwitz was merely a labor camp, to which only the mature and able-bodied should be sent, invariably ran through German records in Paris from late 1941 onwards. There was in all of that evidence no reference whatever to the frightful reality that was taking shape: nothing about the triage at the railway terminal inside the camp—one line for work detail, the other for extermination—and nothing about the gas chambers and the ovens. Did those in charge of the Occupation know or suspect what was actually happening in Poland? Surely the answer varies in different cases, depending on how high or low one looks in the hierarchy. In the end, the point is that the Germans in Paris did not need to be aware of everything in order to perform the task of ridding France of Jews. After all,
Entjudung
was now the official policy of the Third Reich. Those who carried it out in the West only had to do their part. Others, in the East, would take care of the rest.
⁴⁹

Changing of the guard on the Rue de Rivoli

A drum and bugle corps in the Avenue Kléber near the Hotel Majestic

Café terraces are still packed—with German soldiers

Street scene at the Place du Tertre on Montmartre

German meat inspectors confer with French butchers

A little black market operation on the street

German officers in an open limousine leaving the Place Vendôme

A first-class carriage in the Paris metro at rush hour

German soldiers gain directions from a local policeman

A daily parade passes in the center of Paris

Damage caused by Allied bombing of the Renault factory on 4 April 1943

A Franco-German funeral service for victims of the air raid

A German memorial service in the cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine