German Occupation Quotes

“Next to the assignment of the yellow star, the decision to arrest children between the ages of two and 16, then separate them from their parents, was probably the most significant public relations mistake of the Vichy government and their German partners...the sight of youngsters in busses, roaming the streets alone, or holding their mothers hands as they mounted police vehicles made an impression on gentile Parisians. Police reports following the round-up were especially sensitive to public opinion...'The measures taken against the Israelite have profoundly troubled public opinion. Though the French population is generally anti-Semitic, it nonetheless judges these specific measures as inhumane. It is the separation of children from their parents that most affects the French population and that provokes strong criticism of the government and of the occupying authorities...In general, our measures would have been well-received if they had only been aimed at foreign adults, but many were moved at the fate of the children...”
― Ronald C. Rosbottom , When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944

“The strategy of the Germans and their French police cohort was stealthy, predictable, and almost successful. Until mid-1942, when anti-Jewish operations became more violent and the rumors of a Nazi Final Solution had finally reached Paris, most well meaning and generous Parisians were aware in general of the laws restricting the lives of their Jewish co-habitants, but had convinced themselves that the government was only trying to control immigration and terrorism.”
― Ronald C. Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944

“Listen, my son", said Chumra, "I have not come here to plead my defense. But all the same, I will tell you this: the Polish peasant is on my side, not on yours. What have you done for him? Nothing. The value of your prowess to him is that he has been shot, his harvest has been confiscated, his village burned to the ground. What corn and potatoes he has managed to keep, he owes not to you, but to me. Myself, I don't blow up bridges: I simply see to it that my peasants do not die of hunger. I stand between them and the Germans: I prevent them from being starved or driven like lousy cattle to the West. The Polish state will cease to exist? So what? That's better than a Polish state peopled with corpses where every inhabitant looks like a survivor. It's very nice, a hopeless struggle — but the destiny of a race is to survive, and not to die beautifully..."
He tapped his foot.
"If you were to show me ten Polish children, and if I could save them by licking the boots of ten German soldiers, I should say: 'Your servant'...”
― Romain Gary