During the second half of 1942 a large German army was destroyed at Stalingrad and a massive Anglo-American army invaded North Africa. In France the German army reacted by taking over southern France from the Vichy government. In the streets it became progressively harder to avoid encountering Gestapo officers and their French collaborators. Anne-Lise Stern now lived under a false identity and, after the death of her friend Eva Freud, made her way at the start of 1944 to Paris. Here someone denounced her to the authorities as Jewish. She was arrested on 1 April 1944.