Today Sardines Are Not for Sale : A Street Protest in Occupied Paris

On Mother's Day, 31 May 1942, a group of women stormed a small grocery store at the intersection of two Parisian market streets, the rue de Buci and the rue de Seine, to protest the food shortages that had become a chronic feature of daily life. The then-outlawed French Communist party aimed to channel the frustrations of hungry Parisians by organizing such actions throughout the capital and beyond. The so-called "women's demonstration on the rue de Buci" was one such protest, part of a larger, overarching resistance movement against the collaborationist Vichy regime and the German occupiers. The Buci affair became a cause célèbre, in no small part owing to its tragic consequences: the imprisonment, deportation, and execution of some of the protagonists. This book takes an in-depth look at this singular event, its dramatic repercussions, and its rich postwar afterlife. An extraordinary documentary record, together with the oral testimony of surviving resisters, reveal the minute intricacies of an underground partisan operation; the lives and deaths of the protesters, both women and men; the deployment of gender difference as a weapon of war, and the ways in which the incident has been remembered, commemorated, or forgotten. This book is also a meditation on the writing of history itself. Just as the author turns the event inside out to reveal the internal workings of a clandestine action that were hidden from public view, she turns her own project inside out, exposing the story behind the story that readers rarely see. On Mother's Day, 31 May 1942, a group of women stormed a small grocery store at the intersection of two Parisian market streets, the rue de Buci and the rue de Seine, to protest the food shortages that had become a chronic feature of daily life. The then-outlawed French Communist party aimed to channel the frustrations of hungry Parisians by organizing such actions throughout the capital and beyond. The so-called "women's demonstration on the rue de Buci" was one such protest, part of a larger, overarching resistance movement against the collaborationist Vichy regime and the German occupiers. The Buci affair became a cause celebre, in no small part owing to its tragic consequences: the imprisonment, deportation, and execution of some of the protagonists. Thisnbook takes an in-depth look at this singular event, its dramatic repercussions, and its rich postwar afterlife. An extraordinary documentary record, together with the oral testimony of surviving resisters, reveal the minute intricacies of an underground partisan operation; the lives and deaths of the protesters, both women and men; the deployment of gender difference as a weapon of war, and the ways in which the incident has been remembered, commemorated, or forgotten. This book is also a meditation on the writing of history itself. Just as the author turns the event inside out to reveal the internal workings of a clandestine action that were hidden from public view, she turns her own project inside out, exposing the story behind the story that readers rarely see "Today Sardines Are Not For Sale is a microhistory of a single, emblematic event: the demonstration on the rue de Buci, a food protest that took place on May 31, 1942 at a central market area in occupied Paris. It was a time of dire food scarcity, escalating tensions between shoppers and merchants, an upsurge of urban guerrilla violence, and relentless repression of dissent by the authorities. The French collaborationist government at Vichy saw the demonstration as a crime against the State. For the German occupiers, it was "terrorism." For the French Communist party activists who staged the event and participated in it, it was an act of people's justice. What ultimately became known as the "Buci affair" had tragic consequences for the demonstrators and far-reaching ramifications for the underground communist resistance. How did a relatively obscure incident become a short-lived cause célèbre? Why did it mobilize the French police, the courts, and the German military authorities but fail to mobilize the public? How did the party and party activists use gender to shape the event and perceptions of it? This close-up of a single episode reveals the motivations of the committed women and men who orchestrated it, and the visible but unseen moving parts of the "above-ground underground." Today Sardines Are Not For Sale is the product of a privileged moment when it was possible to confront written sources-newly accessible police and court records--with the oral testimony of surviving participants"-- Provided by publisher