Was the Sorbonne open throughout World War II, when the Germans occupied France?

Question

Was the Sorbonne open throughout World War II, when the Germans occupied France?

Answer 1

Although there was considerable privation brought about by shortages of food and fuel the fact is that Paris functioned fairly normally during the occupation.

Schools remained open, cafes and restaurants carried on business, the theaters and cabarets operated normally.

Mentioning this reality is a source of considerable controversy in France and a recent exhibition of photographs showing Parisians leading fairly normal lives during the German occupation sparked ferocious anger with demands that the exhibition be closed down to censor the truth.

Of course photographs speak for themselves and represent a reality which may be unpleasant but which is also unquestionably true.

While the French fought tenaciously for the first six weeks of the German invasion (a fact that is often overlooked) it is also true that once their armies were defeated and the collaborationist Vichy Government created by the duly elected representatives of the people, France, for the most part, ceased to resist.

Until the waning days of the German occupation,  the resistance was embarrassingly small (given the population).

It was part of the political genius of DeGaulle to promulgate the myth of mass resistance (which he claimed to control) to divert attention from the fact that it was mainly a small number of Communists (whom he had almost no control over)who actually did most of the resisting. DeGaulle then was able to rally  hundreds of thousands of people who had, in fact, done nothing for most of the occupation, and claim the right to impose his rule on the country in their name.

EDIT@Cabal

The photographer was, indeed, a collaborator, which was hardly unusual. After all many times more Frenchmen were collaborators than were resistants. To the best of my knowledge there was no attempt to conceal the origin of the photos although there was, as I understand it, no attempt to discredit the images by dismissing them as mere propaganda.

It was not merely some few extremists who called for the exhibit to be shut down. The Paris city council ordered posters advertising the show to be taken down and Christophe Girard, the city council's head of culture  called for it to be shut down completely or, at least, to be closed earlier than its scheduled closing date.

Answer 2

The universities remained opened during the war, the Sorbonne included.

Just to correct Rillifane, the photos in question were taken by a journalist working for a German propaganda paper, which is what sparked the controversy, and if some people did ask for the closure of the show (while the French rushed to see it, myself included) most only asked that the truth about the origins of the pictures and the real description of life under the occupation be added to the very bland explanations under those pictures. They were angry that those who put up the show made it look as if life was all fun and play. If only pictures of smiling British men and women enjoying themselves had been shown with the title "Britons during the war" I bet people would have protested in the UK too.

Edit : Rillifane, they did, but after that milder opinions prevailed and only the explanations were changed. At first there had been no explanation about the origins of the pictures, nothing to say they had been taken for Signal and were not the work of someone just strolling along to take snapshots of life as is but of someone paid to make it look as if people were leading a perfectly comfortable and happy life (taking pictures without an official permit landed you in prison, by the way). It does change the way you look at them. You still enjoy the show, but you take a step back to put them in perspective. The memory my now deceased grand parents had, and my parents still have of that time was not 'normal' life but penury, constant anxiety about food, fear of bombing, wariness towards the Germans, a growing list of restrictions about nearly everything, hours long queues for a piece of bread. As Girard himself said when he left that exhibition, "if it had been explained those were propaganda pictures the exhibition would have been fascinating."