Some madmen, they say, are obsessed by the feeling that an atrocious event has turned their lives upside down. And when they try to understand what gave them such a strong impression of a break between past and present, they can find nothing. Nothing had happened. This was roughly how it was with us. We felt at every moment that a link with the past had been broken. Traditions were interrupted, habits too. And we did not clearly grasp the sense of this change, which defeat itself did not entirely explain. Today I can see what it was: Paris was dead. There were no cars anymore, no passers-by in the streets except at certain times in certain districts. We walked between stones; it seemed we were left behind from some mass exodus. A little provincial life had stuck to the corners of the capital; there remained the skeleton of a city, pompous and immobile, too long and too wide for us. The streets, which you could see down right into the far distance, were too wide; the distances were too great; the perspectives too vast: you lost yourself in them. The Parisians stayed at home or led their lives in immediate locality, for fear of moving between these great severe places which were plunged, every evening, into absolute darkness. (1)
"Ahem. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. Are you sure it's actually recording this time, Lovino? Ok, this is Feliciano Vargas, in an interview with a French Resistance fighter in the heart of Paris, 1946. He would wish for his identity to be anonymous, and for that reason we have blacked out the camera. I will now commence the interview."
Why didn't you flee Paris when you heard the Nazis were coming?
I just… couldn't. I was born here and I will die here. My heart is with Paris, and I would die for this city if it came to it.
How did you feel when the Germans came into town?
Dreadful, sorrowful, humiliated. I hated seeing those German troops march past all of the lovable spots in Paris; my favourite bookstore, the café I used to visit regularly, the house in which the woman I once wished to marry resided. Paris is, or should I say was, a city of artists, dancers, scholars, learners… lovers. Certainly not a place for those uptight Germans and their stuffy military clothing. They took the life out of Paris, and I hated them for that, hated seeing the city like that. A year later and we are still recovering.
How and why did you join the French Resistance?
As I said before, the Germans took the life out of Paris. They not only took it out, but ripped it out and drowned it. They ripped people from their homes, never to be seen again. When they sought for French workers, and we refused, they sent us to work camps. They segregated us from the Jews, one of my best friends was Jewish, but I have not seen him again. Paris is now a city divided, and I thought that my days in Paris full of love were over. I thought Paris would never find its life again, but a good friend of mine came to me and said it was up to us, the Parisians, to fish it out again. France has now been liberated, with the help of Allied troops outside the city and the Resistance within.
A lot of Resistance fighters died leading up to and during that day. Was joining the Resistance worth the risk?
Yes, absolutely. Looking back at it now, there was a lot of things I shouldn't of stuck my nose into, things that could've gotten me killed. There was not a time when a Resistance fighter asked ourselves anxiously, 'If I am captured and tortured, will I be able to hold out?' But that was part of it, you know. I knew the perils that came with being in the Resistance, but if it's not worth the risk, then what is the point of fighting?