Today is the 70 year anniversary of General de Gaulle's speech calling the French to fight back after German occupation. The speech was made from London to the French via the BBC. You can read the speech in English here. There is more background to the speech here in the Guardian article about great speeches of the 20th century. I didn't realise that De Gaulle had literally just fled France and arrived in London one day before.
I passed this little ceremony at Place 18 Juin 1940 (you can see the name in the centre of the photo if you have amazing eyesight) by chance this morning. The mayor of the 6th arondissement is the man wearing a sash. It was rather moving when everyone sang the national anthem, La Marseillaise. There were only about 100 people present. I couldn't get any further back to take the photo as I was already standing on the road - but somehow I felt slightly safe as there were so many police with guns around.
It only struck me today that whoever was living in our apartment in 1940 was under Nazi occuption.
1 comments:
Always good to have cause to reflect..
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