Last week the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended la Grande Guerre which ravaged Europe from 1914 – 1918*. As a young man living in France, I heard much more about la deuxième Guerre Mondiale since my host parents had lived under that occupation**, but the recent anniversary got me thinking about that previous war and what life in France might have been like.

Bulletin de Lille, a bi-weekly publication appearing on Sundays & Thursdays. Published under the authority of the German command. For sale at Madame Tersaud’s 14 See-Aremhault Street.

Lille sous les Allemands / Lille under the Germans

One of the best ways to understand events from the past is to examine primary resources like letters, newspapers, and official documents. A quick search of Project Gutenberg led me to a series of local papers from the years that the city of Lille in northern France was under German occupation. En souvenir de ces evenements (To remember those events) over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of the interesting excerpts I found.

The following is the description of an exchange that took place between the local French town officials and the German command about street cleaning.

Key Vocabulary

propre / clean

sale / dirty

nettoyer / to clean

le trottoir / sidewalk

les maisons riveraines / the houses along the way (riveraines originally referred to buildings along/on either side of a river, it now refers more generally to houses and buildings along a street or other way, as in stationnement réservé aux riverains / parking for residence only)

les propriétaires / homeowners

Want to read more? You can find the full édition du 2 décembre by following this link.

* The Great War, as World War I is known, is also referred to in France as la guerre de 14 18 (and WWII as la guerre de 39 45).
** In fact, both of my son’s great grandfathers were POWs and spent much of WWII in German prison camps.

Images and text CC0 from Project Gutenberg.