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.