Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map by Stephen Ramsay Cartography
- Introduction: The Place de la Bastille
- 1 ‘What's that poor creature doing here?’: the area and the fortress before the Revolution of 1789
- 2 ‘Thought blew the Bastille apart’: the fall of the fortress and the revolutionary years, 1789–1815
- 3 ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- 4 ‘Where is the noise of the storm that I love?’: The Second Empire from Haussmann to the Commune
- 5 ‘Satan's bagpipes’: La Belle Époque's forty-three years of peace
- 6 ‘Villains, stars and everybody in between’: The First War and the entre-deux-guerres
- 7 ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- 8 ‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years
- 9 ‘A building, not a monument’: the construction of the Bastille Opéra
- 10 ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- 11 Flânerie in the archive: the Faubourg/Bastille today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map by Stephen Ramsay Cartography
- Introduction: The Place de la Bastille
- 1 ‘What's that poor creature doing here?’: the area and the fortress before the Revolution of 1789
- 2 ‘Thought blew the Bastille apart’: the fall of the fortress and the revolutionary years, 1789–1815
- 3 ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- 4 ‘Where is the noise of the storm that I love?’: The Second Empire from Haussmann to the Commune
- 5 ‘Satan's bagpipes’: La Belle Époque's forty-three years of peace
- 6 ‘Villains, stars and everybody in between’: The First War and the entre-deux-guerres
- 7 ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- 8 ‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years
- 9 ‘A building, not a monument’: the construction of the Bastille Opéra
- 10 ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- 11 Flânerie in the archive: the Faubourg/Bastille today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The 150th anniversary of the Revolution was commemorated, on 14 July 1939, by a march from Bastille to Nation, organized by the Communist Party, in which 50 000 took part – the last major political demonstration in the Faubourg for several years. I say ‘major’ in reference to size only, for at 3 p.m. on 27 June 1942, with the Occupation at its height, a remarkable event took place at the corner of the avenue Ledru-Rollin and the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Some 200 women, mostly Communists, gathered to the strains of the Marseillaise and distributed tracts to passers-by, to be joined later by a rag-doll effigy of Pierre Laval ‘hanged’ from a gallows improvised from a rod and two bricks. This remained in place all afternoon, for the police mistook the bricks for sticks of explosive and summoned the bomb squad rather than intervening directly.
The 1941 round-ups of Jews and others seen as undesirable saw 8000 arrests in the 11th arrondissement, the centre of the August round-up organized by the Paris police in close cooperation with the Gestapo. During this the area was completely cordoned off and all Métro stations between République and Nation were closed. 4000 Jews, 1500 of them French, were seized and sent to an internment camp which had been prepared for them in the north-eastern suburb of Drancy; most were transported from there to Auschwitz.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Place de la BastilleThe Story of a Quartier, pp. 108 - 120Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011