Simone Rohner, a political deportee freed in April, was deeply traumatized by the hideous symmetry of being shunned anew, mistaken for a tondue merely because she had no hair. ‘Civilians looked at us with an air of disgust; some insults were flung at us. We looked at each other in surprise. What? France did not know about the deportees? … We had to endure scathing words, we cried in rage from it … we received a hostile reception … [and] we were shocked.’
Almost all the returning women had geared themselves up with joy and exhilaration at the thought of returning to a ‘normal life’, but were now enraged, disillusioned and distraught to find they were instead greeted with a lack of empathy and understanding. A decision by Henri Frenay, newly appointed head of the Ministry for Prisoners, Deportees and Refugees, implemented by his department to try banning dissemination of information about the deportees, did not help. Frenay, a former resister who well knew the high price women had paid for their actions, was charged with organizing and overseeing the prisoners’ return shortly after de Gaulle’s provisional government took office in Paris. Yet he claimed that ‘inexact information’ might result in reprisals for the prisoners and cause unnecessary anxiety for their families. In addition, as part of the 1945 government repatriation programme, Frenay regularly emphasized how essential it was for women to leave their salaried jobs now and allow men to return to their position as chef de famille so that former prisoners of war ‘could regain their lost self-confidence’.
With few exceptions, the particular experiences of the several thousand French female political prisoners were excluded from the histories of the period. As the French historian Annette Wieviorka has written: ‘Reading the wartime memoirs of de Gaulle, one would never know that French women were among those deported and subsequently repatriated. Writing of the prisoners’ return, he called it “a grand national event … [one] charged with joy … when the nation recovered its two and a half million sons”.’
Superficially de Gaulle’s provisional government was overseeing a return to normality. On 29 April French women voted for the first time in municipal elections, following a decree the previous year which declared that ‘women are voters and eligible under the same conditions as men’.* Food now appeared in the shops, including bananas, an exotic item for many children who were seeing them for the first time; however, rationing, queues and squabbles over provisions were still very much in evidence. Occasionally families were reunited and then the fine wine, well hidden in cellars or behind secret walls throughout the Occupation, would be retrieved. But, more often, families learned of loved ones who would never return, and they had little to celebrate.
Almost immediately after the Liberation of Paris, as Allied troops moved into the city, so too did their support teams of diplomats, civil servants, secretaries and journalists, many of whom were astounded by the flamboyance of French fashion. Expecting to see a nation on its knees, they saw instead war-slimmed Parisiennes wearing very short skirts, over-padded shoulders, extravagant turbans (often stuffed with old stockings to make them fuller), loud colours and very high wooden or cork platform shoes. Some Americans were outraged by such showiness while a war was still being fought. But they misunderstood French culture and the belief among some Parisiennes that to look dowdy was a negation of their patriotic duty, when by sporting extravagant costumes they could thumb their noses at the Germans. Some even went as far as to call it ‘resisting’. Fashion was, for the French, even after four years of occupation, anything but trivial. For them, remaining stylish provided a beacon of hope for the future. It was a matter of pride to make a dress from old curtains if they could, or to adapt a man’s suit if the man wasn’t coming home. ‘Many French women tried to assert their individuality in defiance of the enemy; they remained as fashion conscious as possible throughout the war in order to retain their pride, boost morale and remain true to themselves, because fashion expressed their identity.’