Following the execution of the activists Tyszelman and Gautherot, the underground newspaper *L’Humanité* called for their revenge.
On August 21, 1941, Pierre Georges—a Communist member of the Resistance, military commissioner ofthe Organisation Spéciale (OS), and the future Colonel Fabien—shot and killed a German cadet in the Paris metro at the Barbès-Rochechouart station. Pierre Georges shouted: “ “I avenged Titi,” who had been shot two days earlier by the Nazis.
He was the first German soldier to be killed in the capital in broad daylight and in full view of everyone. The objective was twofold: to shatter the Germans’ sense of security and to force the Nazi army of the Third Reich to keep troops in France that would otherwise be available on the Eastern Front.
By stepping up the armed struggle, the communists hope to demonstrate that the country is not subject to the Occupation laws. Young Jews joined the Youth Battalions, which, alongside the OS, were tasked with carrying out high-impact operations: Molotov cocktail attacks, arson, and the destruction of buildings requisitioned by the German army…
The use of terrorist attacks marked a turning point in the Communists’ approach; until then, they had focused on raising public awareness and calling on the population to join the Resistance.
From August 20 to 24, 1941, a large-scale roundup took place in Paris. It was carried out in districts with large Jewish populations, beginning in the 11th arrondissement before spreading to other districts. More than 4,000 foreign and French Jews, men, were brutally arrested and interned at the Drancy camp in the Paris region. The clandestine Jewish section of the M.O.I. was severely tested. Starting in March 1942, dozens of overcrowded trains would depart from the Drancy camp, bound for certain death…
