Last Twilight in Paris

Although Last Twilight in Paris is a work of fiction, it depicts a very real historical period in which the fate of France, among other countries, was unknown due to Germany’s aggression and the collaboration of some French citizens with the German war effort and the attempted extermination of French Jews.

Helaine and Gabriel, for example, respond to the news that German forces have invaded France in May 1940. Within a month, the Germans defeated French forces and occupied Paris: “An armistice was signed ​on June 22, 1940 and […] France was divided into a German occupied zone in the North, a French governed zone in the South, also known as Vichy, which collaborated with the Germans and had certain authority also in the German-occupied zone, and a small demilitarized Italian occupied zone in the Southeast” (“The German Occupation of France.” Yad Vashem). Anti-Jewish measures were enacted, including minimizing Jewish participation in French society and creating strict rules as to who qualified as a Jew. Jews in the German Zone were made to wear the yellow star, as Helaine is forced to do. 

Jews were rounded up and sent to camps in the occupied zone, beginning with those of foreign nationality, which Helaine observes. She believes her French nationality will keep her safe, and it does for a short time. Gabriel encourages her to consider leaving Paris, or even France, just as many Jews fled the Germans, moving to the Southern Zone and, later, to the Italian Zone. “The July 16-17, 1942 […] roundup of Jews in Paris instigated the ​systematic mass deportations from France […]. In November 1942, the Germans occupied the Southern Zone and continued the ongoing actions to arrest Jews and deport them to their extermination” (“The German Occupation of France”). In keeping with this timeline, Helaine is arrested and sent to Lévitan in 1943.

Helaine and her family might have escaped persecution and death had they realized how dire their situation would become, but German aggression came in a series of horrifying waves. Prior to the German invasion, France was considered to be a “great military power,” and yet “intelligence failure, operational and tactical inferiority, and poor strategic leadership” contributed to the hasty resolution of the Battle of France (Beverelli, Lorris. “Why France Lost in 1940.” War Writers, 11 Oct. 2020). That France should fall, and so quickly, was unthinkable. Many French Jews also believed that France’s general religious toleration would prevent any large-scale antisemitic persecution from occurring. This helps to explain why French Jews, like Helaine and her parents, did not understand the urgency of their situation and flee persecution when they had the chance.

During wartime, many French citizens chose to become German collaborators rather than risk their own safety by opposing German rule. Ultimately, “Franco-German collaboration facilitated the arrests and deportations of approximately 78,000 ​Jews, about a quarter of French Jewry, to extermination camps” (“The German Occupation of France”). National feeling regarding these collaborators can be observed in the novel through the depiction of Maxim, the lecherous and self-serving Lévitan guard, and when other prisoners accuse Helaine’s husband of working with the Germans. After the war, more than 10,000 collaborators were put to death, including Pierre Laval, a Vichy politician who had eagerly led the regime’s collaboration with the Nazis.