There’s a photograph from the summer of 1944 that shows a woman walking through a crowd in Chartres, France. Her head has been shaved. She’s barefoot, holding an infant, and there are people all around her, dozens of them, just standing there watching it happen. You can see people smiling in the crowd and there’s a man behind her who appears to be shoving her forward.
The photograph was taken by Robert Capa, one of the most famous war photographers of the twentieth century, and it shows what was happening all over France that summer, in town after town, once the Germans were gone.
Twenty thousand women punished for surviving the occupation
Most people know the liberation of France as a celebration. The photographs of soldiers being kissed, flowers thrown, champagne in the streets. That’s the version that made it into the movies. But there’s another version, one that was happening in the streets at the same time.
