Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

Abstract

Although Jewish, Stein and Toklas remained in France throughout the German occupation, counting on their age, their celebrity, and the intervention of a friend very close to Marshall Pétain to protect them. In Wars I Have Seen (1945) Stein considers the meaning of the wars that marked her lifetime and provides a description of her and Alice’s life during the war. In the first of these selections, she explains their decision not to flee the occupying forces; in the second, the ironic detachment with which she has recorded the years of fear and privation slips as she expresses her joy when American soldiers finally arrive in their remote village.