Here is an iconic photograph that I have seen in any number of documentaries, generally identified as
a Frenchman who weeps for his city as the Nazis march into Paris.
I have always been curious about this photo. I wondered where it came from and who this person was. It has a certain tragic dignity about it.
Here is what I have been able to discover.
It first appeared in print in
Life Magazine in their 3 March 1941 issue on page 29. This is the photo which I show above and not the more tightly cropped versions that are often used in documentaries.
The caption on the photo. identifies it as "a Frenchman sheds tears of patriotic grief as the flags of his country's last regiments are exiled to Africa."
So obviously this is not a photo taken in 1940 in Paris, as the French regimental flags had been moved into the south of France in order to preserve them from the surrender. The flags themselves were not taken to Africa until 1941.
Here is a more commonly available photograph of the same scene. It is a moment frozen in time.
Marseille sous l'occupation by Lucien Gaillard says that this is a photo of Monsieur Jerôme Barzotti, taken in Marseilles on February 20, 1941. This is after the Nazi entrance into Paris in June, 1940.
I have not been able to find out anything else about him. He does look old enough to have fought in The Great War. Is he even French, or an Italian émigré who had fled the tyranny of Mussolini? Perhaps he was part of the Barzetti industrial family from Italy, and related to Federico who later founded Barzetti Pastries? I cannot say.
I wonder how he fared, and if he was able to see the restoration of France and the end of the war.
Why should we even care about him, his risings and fallings, his perplexity and concerns, his fears and sorrows?
Because when the ocean's dry up, and the earth grows cold and dies, as the stars flicker and grow dim in the sky, and creation turns back into dust, Monsieur Barzetti's soul will continue on, vibrantly alive, and his tears will have long been wiped away, by kindly hands bearing tender mercies.
A reader has been kind enough to share this newspaper clipping with us.
The newspaper clipping is from The Decatur Daily Review (Decatur, Illinois), 22 Apr 1949
