The Jean Tabaud Project

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Portraits of German Soldiers - 1942-1944

     With the fall of France in 1940, Jean Tabaud was taken prisoner by the occupying Germans. While in the prisoner of war camp, he passed his time sketching portraits of fellow prisoners. Drawing was but a hobby of his. His profession was ballet dancing. However, when he was able to escape the camp, he discovered that this hobby proved to be a convenient way of making a living for an escaped prisoner traveling with false identity papers, forever under threat of being caught. (See Biography)

     Tabaud supported himself as a peripatetic artist going from one café to another at night, drawing the portraits of German soldiers of all ranks, from all services. By war's end, he had executed over 5,000. Several of the photos of these portraits are on view here. Anyone who can identify these men is asked to please contact me, his biographer, Elise Dallemagne-Cookson. (See Contacts).

     Tabaud's memoir is prefaced with the following quote from the philosopher and writer Julien Benda:

"La paix, si elle existe jamais, ne sera pas basée sur le peur de la guerre, mais sur l'amour de la paix. Elle ne sera pas une abstention d'agir, mais l'avènement d'un état d'esprit. En ce sens, le plus insignifiant des écrivains peut servir la paix où les tribunaux les plus puissants ne peuvent rien."

Translation:

"Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind. In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve the cause of peace where the most powerful of men can do nothing."

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