Zócalo Public Square

Only eight days after German tanks rolled into Paris, silent and deserted in the summer of 1940, France accepted defeat and foreign occupation. But even though a swastika flew over the city, cultural life survived and even flourished. Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf sang for French and German audiences. Pablo Picasso painted in his Left Bank apartment, even though his work was officially banned. Over 200 French films were produced, including the classic “Les Enfants du Paradis”, and thousands of books were published by authors as politically divergent as the anti-Semite Céline and the anti-Nazi Jean-Paul Sartre. But as Jews, including artists, fled or were deported to concentration camps, many French intellectuals began to join the resistance and debate the role of artists in war. Were artists saving or betraying their country by continuing to work? Journalist Alan Riding, author of And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris, visited Zócalo to explore the life, work, and moral responsibility