The Virtue of Integrity

Jean Guéhenno lived in Nazi-occupied France, where, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he refused to write a word for a publishing industry under Nazi control. He felt shame about the Vichy government’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. “What to make of French writers, who, to stay on the right side of the occupation authorities, decide to write about anything but the one thing all French people are thinking about,” Guéhenno asked in his journal, later published as Diary of the Dark Years, “or worse still, who, out of cowardice, bolster the occupants’ plan to make it appear as though everything in France continues as it did before?”.