Though the war was just a short part of Sylvia Beach’s life, knowing that she was in Paris during Nazi occupation makes one wonder what her experience was like. Beach did not write extensively about the war or her personal experiences in her memoir, but there are several insights into what happened to her.

Shakespeare and Company survived the beginning of World War II and the 1940 Fall of Paris, but Beach eventually had to close in late 1941. Alongside many other women, Beach was arrested, confined briefly in a Parisian zoo, and then interned at Vittel Internment Camp in eastern France (“Stratford-on-Odéon” 178). The camp was composed mostly of female inmates who held either American or British passports. Page Dougherty Delano writes that “a number of people have addressed the subject of Vittel during wartime” (including Beach) but “a full narrative of the internment camp has yet to be written…” (Delano 104). Women like Beach who were imprisoned at Vittel for part of the war have written about the experience in their memoirs, but as Delano says, there is still much information yet to be uncovered. What is known, however, is that Vittel was relatively safe for its long-term internees. Conditions were considerably better than other internment camps in France, and certainly leagues better than the concentration camps the Nazis constructed elsewhere in Europe (Delano 106). Beach was released from Vittel after about six months.