Created with arms in hand, the communist daily "La Marseillaise" continues to resist

At the end of August 1944, Marseille was liberated. Fighting raged in the city, pitting the Nazi occupiers against the Allied troops who had just arrived from North Africa to support the resistance fighters who were putting up pressure. On either side of the Old Port, the two local newspapers were currently in the hands of the collaborationists. But since December 1943, a team of communist resistance fighters had been secretly printing, from Aix, a title that took the name of the national anthem banned by the Vichy regime to impose its "Maréchal nous voilà" (Marshal, here we are) . On August 22, the gang stormed the headquarters of the Pétainist newspaper Le Petit Marseillais (The Little Marseillais ). The first issue of La Marseillaise was officially released a few days later, with a blue-white-red flag and a photo of General de Gaulle on the front page, headlined "Marseille Liberated" .

Eighty-one years later, this Tuesday, on the occasion of National Resistance Day, it is this history that the municipality wanted to honor by renaming the esplanade bordering the building that still houses the editorial office today "Place du journal la Marseillaise."

The facade is a little decrepit, but the French flag still flies there. Above all, the renovation work on the neighboring premises is almost finished, a sign that the newspaper