Today, the spot where this happened is marked with a small plaque bearing the name of Georges Loiseleur, who "died for France". A 19 year old, Rene Dova, who was killed in the same incident is also remembered.
Across the city there are about 500 of these memorials dating from the week of fighting exactly 70 years ago, when Parisians won back their lost honour and threw off the Nazi yoke.
The earliest ones were put up spontaneously by families or comrades. Later, a law of 1946 set out strict rules about proof of merit, and about appropriate language.
Thus, while the first plaques use emotional phrases like "lachement assassine par les Boches" (victim of a cowardly murder by the Hun), the later formula "Mort pour la France" reflects an official appropriation of the act of memory.
Each memorial evokes a personal story from the liberation of Paris. But time is passing, and the memory of what actually happened at each of these 500 spots is fading.
Adam Clark on 25 Jan 14"Since 2009, the Gallup polling firm has surveyed people in 150 countries and territories on, among other things, their daily emotional experience. Their survey asks five questions, meant to gauge whether the respondent felt significant positive or negative emotions the day prior to the survey. The more times that people answer "yes" to questions such as "Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?", the more emotional they're deemed to be."
