Johann Pepin's blog

Questions for Marco

Below are Colin Walsh's questions for Marco, followed by his replies. Thank you for your interest, Colin!

 

1.How did the German occupation (at least early) affect Parisian industry and jobs?

The Germans were in control and supervising the French economy, using it for its war effort. The CEOs of every French company had to report to the Nazis and make sure to satisfy their needs in term of production. For the regular workers the only change could have been working on making tanks instead of cars, for example, but that was already the case when war was declared. Before the invasion, however, the tanks they made were for the French army.

 

2.How long before the economy started grinding to a halt (or was he gone before that happened)?

All the factories shut down when the Germans neared the capitol because the people of Paris fled. Until the Nazis were at their doorstep, everyone believed the propaganda that the Germans were going to be stopped by the French army. I remember going to work and seeing Belgians and the people from the North of France in the street, running away from the invading forces. The Germans made sure to have all major factories up and running again quickly, though, and it didn’t take long for the employees to come back. The Germans had conquered nearly all of France in a few months, and it was better to be occupied with a job than without one.

 

3.Did any of his friends become “Vichy” or supporters of the Germans? If so, did it break along social or economic lines? Or maybe ethnic/religious?

No. All my friends in the neighbourhood were communist or socialist and they hated the Germans and the Nazis or their followers. I didn’t have to deal with betrayal in my group of friends.

 

4.Was your grandfather church-going? If so, what role did the Church play, at least that he saw, in things?

My mother was a religious person, so I went to church until first communion. My father wasn’t religious and felt that the church had a negative influence on its followers, so there was a lot of talk about how I should be raised. When I was old enough I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and haven’t set foot in a church since. The church didn’t have much influence in Ivry sur Seine, as it was a communist, blue-collar part of Paris, and people believed more in self-reliance than promises of the afterlife. In general, though, the French church didn’t do much to support the Resistance that I was aware of.

Marco Replies to Your Questions...

Briane writes:

Why didn’t Marco and the women flee with his father and brother?

 

Marco says:

It was a difficult choice. We only had three bikes for a family of five and no other transportation was available. Trains quickly proved to be out of the question. With the Germans approaching Paris at great speed, approximately 20 trains with 198 cars left Paris between June 8 and June 13^th. The conditions for passengers were bad – hot, overcrowded and insufficient water – and that was on the trains that weren’t being attacked by German planes.

 

Still, Parisians were desperate to get on the trains and get out of town. They waited for hours in the stifling June heat. People were fainting, fighting, crying. No medical personnel were on hand to help  sick people or pregnant women. You could almost smell the desperation in the air. When the trains finally shut their doors, they could barely move for the crush of the crowd on the tracks, blocking their way. A train leaving Paris on June 11 took nine hours to travel the first 300 meters.

 

So people took to the roads. They walked or rode bikes. There were so many people on the roads, though, that going by bike or foot took even longer than it normally would have. On May 10 there were three million people in Paris. By June 13, just one million remained. And that doesn’t count all the refugees from Belgium and the northern parts of France.

 

My mother, sister and I didn’t go because leaving would have meant giving up our flat, our jobs, everything. And my parents had experience with being occupied. They knew that the Germans would likely capture and send away the adult males, but as a boy under eighteen years old, I was relatively safe, at least for the moment. So the three of us stayed, to hold down the fort, so to speak. We still believed that the French would rise up and drive the Germans out Paris, so we intended to ride out the storm in our home.

 

The plan was doomed before they left the city limits, though. They didn’t know it, but the French army had already blown up the bridges crossing the Loire. Wanting to be very sure the Germans didn’t traverse the river, they destroyed the bridges themselves. My father and brother never saw the Loire, though. German tanks overtook them on their way and, defeated, Roger, Jean and the rest of the refugees were back in Paris again a few weeks after they first left.

 

Blair writes:

Did the depression hit France hard the way it did the US? How did the Pepin family cope with that?

 

Marco says:

France wasn’t a large world economy at the time, so it didn’t get hit as hard as the United States. In 1931, the first effects of the crisis were a drop in prices and a slowdown of industrial and agricultural production. The crisis was less severe but lasted longer than in the States. When other countries were already rebounding, France was still struggling.

 

I don’t have many memories of that time, as I was quite young (I was about seven years old). But I do remember the strikes of 1936. The workers took over the factories and barricaded themselves inside, halting production and locking out management. The employees lived inside the factory for the duration of the strike, spending their days performing maintenance on the machinery.

 

My father was one of the workers on strike. He would put a ladder up to the story-high windows of the factory and throw a rope down the outside wall. It was my job to tie the basket of food my mother had prepared to the rope. After nine straight days, the workers’ demands were met. They received a ten percent raise and laws were passed to reduce the work week from 48 hours to 40 and to entitle each worker two weeks of paid vacation per year. My father took his first paid vacation day at age 40.