Abstract
The defeat of France in 1940 and the subsequent German Occupation provoked shortages and even starvation in the country. Since women were traditionally the first concerned by the supply issue, they were the first to protest against restrictions and rationing. Several 100 ‘manifestations de ménagères’ (‘housewives’ demonstrations’) took place in France from 1940 to 1944. It was the most important collective mobilisation against the Vichy regime which ruled the country under the control of the German occupiers.
Paula Schwartz, Professor of French Studies at Middlebury College, tackles one of these demonstrations known as the ‘manifestation de la Rue de Buci’. On 31 May 1942, the Eco grocery located on the corner of the rue de Buci and the rue de Seine was featuring sardines packed in oil, cans of which were stacked inside the shop. Women gathered in front of the grocery and invaded the shop to loot it. A fight broke out between women and the shop's employees. Plainclothes police officers intervened but two of them were shot down by armed men who were present in the crowd. The site of the demonstration (central Paris), the violence of the fight, and the fact that two police officers died explain why the demonstration of the rue de Buci is very significant.
To understand the underside of this demonstration Paula Schwartz has studied all sources relevant to the event, particularly police and judicial archives which are located in the Paris Police Prefecture or in the French National Archives. When she first became interested in the event, she also met the last survivors of the demonstration and interviewed them.
Paula Schwartz shows that the ‘demonstration on the rue de Buci’ was not just a women's protest for better supply. The gathering was not ‘spontaneous’ but had been meticulously prepared by the outlawed French Communist Party: ‘the entire operation was itself an act of propaganda; party organisers had staged the event not so much to distribute a few cans of sardines but rather to send a message’ (p. 30). The date was certainly not chosen at random. 31 May was Mother's Day and referred to the end of the Commune in 1871, the last revolutionary moment in France. Rather than a simple demonstration, the event on rue de Buci was a true underground partisan operation. The main organiser of the demonstration, Madeleine Marzin, worked as an elementary schoolteacher but was actually a professional activist. She had joined the Communist Party in 1932 and when the party was outlawed and forced underground in 1939, she led a double life. She taught by day and organised women to participate in propaganda operations the rest of the time. Women activists of the Communist Party were not alone in the rue de Buci: in the shadows, an armed commando of partisans was charged to protect them. Men took part in this ‘housewives’ demonstration’. Their presence at the scene explains the shooting of police officers and gave a particular dimension to the event, considered by the authorities as an ‘act of war’.
Because two policemen died in a violent demonstration involving the outlawed Communist Party, the repression was merciless. Forty people were arrested. The main protagonists were prosecuted and the French court sentenced five women to prison, which in the context of the Occupation meant deportation to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Eight men directly implicated in the operation were condemned to death and executed.
From a simple event, Paula Schwartz actually tells a multitude of stories, following the main protagonists and their fates after they were arrested. Her book is not only about a women's demonstration in occupied Paris. It makes a major contribution to the social history of France during the ‘dark years’ of the German occupation and emphasises how significant the food issues were at that time (‘Food had become a major preoccupation, even an obsession; it was a constant subject of conversation, government reports and articles in the press’, p. 15). The second main contribution of Paula Schwartz's book is its detailed explanation of how the underground Communist Party worked inside and its place within the French Resistance. The author elaborates the popular basis of the party (‘the critical mass of demonstrators were working people’, p. 70) and the way it recruited (‘the identities of the participants reveal the critical importance of social and familial networks’, p. 72). She emphasises the gendered nature of roles between men and women in the underground movement (‘women and men played complementary roles, had different levels of visibility and faced different consequences’, p. 63). Paula Schwartz also explores the memory of the event and the way in which the demonstration was commemorated or forgotten after the war. Last but not least, Paula Schwarz's work places the ‘rue de Buci demonstration’ in a longer history from the days of October 1789 to the looting of Fauchon in 1970 by Maoist militants, demonstrating that ‘the food demonstration was not new to France, it was part of a centuries old tradition’ (p.16).