“For Parisians the Seine is a compass, a way to know where you are,” said art historian Marina Ferretti.France had a relatively easier time under German occupation during World War II. That is because Hitler did not consider West Europeans as ‘Untermenschen’. The infamous German brutality was reserved for the Russians.
These images were taken in Occupied Paris during World War II by André Zucca for Nazi German propaganda magazine Signal using rare Agfacolor film supplied by the Wehrmacht. Zucca was arrested after the 1944 liberation but never prosecuted. He worked until his death in 1973 under an assumed name.
When exhibited in Paris in 2008, Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris, ordered a notice to accompany the images stating that the pictures avoid the “reality of occupation and its tragic aspects.”
