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

This is the story of a demonstration for food organized by the underground French Communist party that took place at a central Parisian marketplace on May 31, 1942. The so-called "women''s demonstration on the rue de Buci" became a cause célèbre. In this microhistory of the event, Schwartz examines the many moving parts of an underground operation; the lives and deaths of the protesters, both women and men; and the ways in which the incident was remembered, commemorated, or forgotten. The study is based on interviews with surviving resisters and on a rich documentary record.

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 was 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.