My parents didn't talk about the past': how director Caroline Huppert recovered her family's wartime secrets

A family can appoint its own historian through informal, opaque recruitment. In the late 1990s, Caroline Huppert, one of five siblings, recorded her father’s life using a tape recorder over five days. Her father shared memories of his experiences before and during the Second World War. Their historical interests differed: she preferred the nouvelle histoire focused on daily life details, while he favored emperors, kings, and dates. More than 25 years later, these exchanges contributed to her memoir about her parents’ love story. Her father was Jewish and her mother Catholic, and her haute-bourgeois family opposed their marriage after they met in 1934 at HEC in Paris. They fled Paris for the Free Zone near Lake Annecy before Nazi invasion. Huppert had not known these details because her parents focused on the present rather than the past.

"Their relationship so easily might never have happened: he was Jewish, she Catholic, and after they met in 1934 at Paris's HEC business school, her haute-bourgeois family were opposed to them marrying. A big enough obstacle even before the Nazis invade France, and the young lovers are forced to flee the capital for the Free Zone near Lake Annecy. I wasn't aware of any of it in the least, says the 75-year-old on a phone call from her home in Paris. My parents weren't people who talked about the past. They were always absorbed in the present, in action."

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