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39 Nor is it the case that everybody who decided to abstain from writing in legitimate outlets did so out of conviction. Some Jewish intellectuals, like Benda, were concerned about their safety and withdrew from public life. Even if they wanted to publish, they found it difficult to find a willing publisher and to bypass the censor. More was at stake, however: the act of silence acquired a special significance at the time. 41 It is indicative that silence played such a central role in Vercors’ famous Resistance novel Le Silence de la mer42 which appeared in 1942 and in which two members of a French household – an older man and his niece – refuse to speak to their selfimposed lodger, a German officer.

18 This list was updated in 1942 and 1943, eventually banning more than 1,500 books. Books written by Jewish or so-called anti-German authors, ranging from Sigmund Freud to Charles de Gaulle, were to be destroyed. The Propaganda-Staffel 30 occupation, intellectual collaboration and the resistance stipulated that publishing companies should not publish Jewish or anti-German books. In cases of uncertainty the manuscript was to be sent to Propaganda-Staffel, which would decide whether or not it was publishable.

For instance, they were sceptical of Sartre’s political credentials, and this partly explains why he did not join the movement before 1943. Among those intellectuals who did not promote collaborationism, it was difficult, at the time and subsequently, to identify those who compromised themselves through their writings. During the war, noncollaborationist writers expressed different, even opposing, views as to what was regarded as permissible. Some writers took the position that any form of official publication during the German occupation and Vichy was an act of collaboration.