Occupation and Liberation with Context: A World War II Tour of Paris

Paris may be the City of Lights but its history is sometimes shrouded in darkness. On this walking tour with novelist and Context Travel Expert, Samuél Lopez-Barrantes, you‘ll embark on a 90-minute journey to explore the brutal collaboration between the French police and the Nazis who occupied Paris. As you walk through the Latin Quarter, Samuél will shed light on the complex and difficult history behind the Nazi occupation and share tales of the city’s resilience as Parisians fought to reclaim their beloved city from German control.

Our walk starts in front of Hôtel Lutetia, a luxury hotel that was a hotspot for young expat artists including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Josephine Baker before it became the home of Nazi counter-intelligence forces. From there, you‘ll wind through the Left Bank to Rue de Buci, where a Nazi officer nicknamed Dr Jazz transformed the street into a hotbed of musical activity. As you make your way to the Right Bank where the tour ends, you‘ll hear about Charles de Gaulle, Sylvia Beach, and various resistance groups. You‘ll learn how the city banded together to take their beloved Paris back from the Germans and why there are almost no plaques commemorating the death of a resistance fighter before the last week of the occupation.

Along the way, you‘ll have a chance to:

• Learn how Parisians defended their city and transformed narrow streets into strategic locations for the resistance
• Consider the moral struggle that existed between various fractions as they grappled between collaboration and resistance
• Hear about the diverse facets of the French Resistance
• See the Commissariat de Police building, where you’ll find out the role the police played in the occupation and resistance
• Meet key figures in the French Resistance, from Charles de Gaulle, Charles Leclerc and Julia Gréco, to Sylvia Beach and James Reese Europe
• Gain an understanding of French politics leading up to World War II
• Take in the original and new Shakespeare and Company bookstores
• Visit the Shoah and Deportation memorials that honor the Jewish French victims and the 6 million who tragically perished during the Holocaust

By the end of this 90-minute tour, you‘ll understand how the City of Light turned into one of darkness during Nazi Occupation, and have a sense of Parisians’ struggles and resilience during this dark time.