On the 16th August 1944, in the French town of Chartres the horrific suffering of one
woman was captured by photographers.
Simone Touseau was a young 23 year old woman who was being paraded through the streets
and she was subjected to what became known as the Ugly Carnival.
Following the liberation of different cities and towns in France during the Second World
War following D-Day, there were many brutal reprisals for those men and women who were
seen as Nazi or German collaborators.
For the French people, those who worked with the Germans or helped them were seen as the
worst traitors and they would be subjected to executions but as torturous ordeals.
Women were targeted for a harrowing ordeal which involved them having their heads shaved
as a form of humiliation and they were paraded throughout the streets as the baying French
public wanted to inflict further suffering on them.
But the story of Simone Touseau’s ordeal in the French city was harrowing and it was
something she could not live with, and the humiliation she suffered for sleeping with
a German soldier scared her for the rest of her life.
Join us today as we look at the horrific torture of the French mother shaved for sleeping with
a German.
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During the Second World War, the Nazi state would issue orders that German women who were
accused of sleeping with non-aryans or foreign prisoners should be paraded in public and
shamed.
But the French would use this sort of punishment in 1944 following the D-Day landings.
The French Resistance would target those women who were considered collaborators who had
been involved in horizontal collaboration and sleeping with the enemy.
The Ugly Carnival as it would be known as would see the women having their heads forcibly
shaved and their hair was often burned in front of them.
There were sights like this across France, for example in Cherbourg on the 14th July
1944, a truckload of women mostly teenagers were driven through the streets after having
their heads shaved, and one woman in Villedieu had simply just been a cleaner in the local
German headquarters but she was still subjected to this treatment.
The French suffered under German occupation so the resistance wanted to hand out punishment
for those who even supported them in the smallest ways.
A large number of victims of the Ugly carnival were prostitutes who had plied their trade
with Germans as well as Frenchmen, and some in Paris were even beaten to death such was
the hanger.
The ugly carnival wasn’t just the head shaving, after this happened the women were then forced
to run the gauntlet in the public and they would have things thrown at them and also
they would be hit and kicked and often left bloody.
Many of these women had fallen in love with German soldiers, and some would leave with
them at the end of the Second World War.
There were some persecuted school teachers who had been forced to house German soldiers
but they were forced into the ugly carnival.
Many of these women had received better food and rations for their collaboration.
Some of them were covered in swastikas in paint of lipstick during their ordeal, and
others were covered in tar and were stripped half naked.
One witness to the proceedings would state, ‘"I watched an open lorry drive past, to
the accompaniment of boos and catcalls from the French populace, with a dozen miserable
women in the back, every hair on their heads shaved off.
They were in tears, hanging their heads in shame.
While disgusted by this cruelty, I reflected that we British had known no invasion or occupation
for some 900 years.
So we were not the best judges."
Another witness claimed that the victims had their look in the hands of their tormentors
of a hunted animal, and that ‘"The French were rounding up collaborators, cutting their
hair off and burning it in huge piles, which one could smell miles away.
Also, women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten."
It’s known that at least 20,000 women were known to have had their heads shaved in France,
and estimates suggest that 80,000 children were fathered by Wehrmacht soldiers in France.
But one of the most shocking sights saw a young French woman who was 23 years old being
dragged throughout the streets of Chartres.
On the 16th August 1944, Simone Touseau a young mother who had been working as a translator
for the German army was subjected to the ugly carnival.
Looking on for this was photographer Robert Capa and he would capture her suffering.
Simone had been allegedly in a relationship with a German soldier since 1941, and the
pair had a child, a daughter who was still a baby when she was subjected to the ugly
carnival.
She was a woman who was accused of denouncing and telling the German authorities of her
neighbours who were then deported and were taken away.
These claims were denied by Touseau, but she was then subjected to the ugly carnival.
She was taken first into the centre of Chartres where a member of the French resistance saved
her hair off, leaving her with nothing.
Following this she was then branded on the forehead with a red hot iron, almost like
a medieval punishment.
She was subjected to the public parade of ridicule and revenge, and the branding of
her would have been very painful.
But after this the people shouted at her and accused her of horizontal collaboration.
She was accompanied to her ordeal by her father who walked a step in front of her and he wore
a beret and carried with him a cloth bag.
Behind her who was also forcibly shaven was Simone’s mother Germaine and the whole family
was subjected to humiliation.
It was a sad moment as hundreds of French civilians came to witness the torture and
ordeal, and they looked on and laughed at Simone and her mother, but also they threw
things and would kick and try to get to her, and inflict their own punishment.
But in her arms whilst she walked throughout Chartres was her daughter, which added more
pain to the ordeal as she was in danger.
She was also accompanied by French policeman who kept an eye on things so that the French
did not go too far, and she was then escorted back to her home.
Following arriving back at home, Simone Touseau would then make her way to prison and her
ordeal would then begin as she was sentenced to time for her collaboration.
Her mother along with her was also sent to prison and was tried in a treason trial that
went on for some time and this ended in 1947.
The courtroom for her sleeping with the germans and working with them, led to Simone Touseau
being sentenced to ten years of national degradation and she was considered a shameful traitor.
But the ordeal that Simone Touseau was forced to experience made her infamous across France
and many people knew who she was and because of this they looked down upon her.
She struggled to cope with this throughout her life and decades later she continued to
suffer, and in 1966 at the age of 44 she died, having turned to drinking away her sorrows
and her pain.
Today many people consider Simone Touseau a victim of the evils of the ugly carnival.
She was a woman who was targeted and was subjected to a horrific ordeal in which she was targeted
for abuse and violence.
The fact she was branded was meant to leave her with a permanent reminder of her crimes,
and the sight of the woman who had her head shaved and her baby in her arms was a harrowing
spectacle.
But the story of Simone Touseau was much darker and the experience she had inside of Chartres
during the Second World War led to her life being cut short.
There were many other women whose lives were changed by the public humiliation that they
were subjected to.
Many of these were women who had no option but to help support the Germans in different
ways.
These were women who were forced to give up rooms in their homes to billet German soldiers
as if they didn’t they’d be thrown out and made homeless.
Others were women who were forced into feeding German soldiers, but a number of other women
realised that if they did not support the Germans then they would have suffered themselves
from a lack of food, like the rest of the German population.
As mentioned there were women who fell in love with the German soldiers, and some would
even join prisoner of war camps to be with their men.
The Ugly Carnival would affect the emotions of the Allied soldiers who were there to fight
the germans and they would be hesitant to stop it due to the anger that these people
had.
Simone Touseau’s ordeal was not stopped, and she was then taken to prison following
it, despite the fact allied photographers and many others watched on.
She was left to the anger of the French people.
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