[1] After the week of the barricades in Algiers in 1960, the CGT, CFTC, FO and FEN trade union centers overcome their differences to work together for the peace movement in Algeria.

A meeting had been authorized at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris, but thousands of people, especially students, who were unable to enter the hall, came up against the forces of the police.

[4] According to Jean-Paul Brunet, the repression of this demonstration revealed the bias of the police forces, which reacted much more sluggishly against supporters of French Algeria.

[8] The demonstration of 19 December 1961 - convened in the Paris region by the CGT, the CFTC and the UNEF was part of a "day of action against the OAS and for peace in Algeria".

On 4 January 1962, a commando in a car machine-gunned the Communist Party building on Place Kossuth, seriously injuring a militant on the 2nd floor balcony.

[9] In the afternoon of 7 February, ten plastic charges exploded in the homes of various personalities: two law professors, Roger Pinto and Georges Vedel, two journalists, Serge Bromberger, from Le Figaro, and Vladimir Pozner, seriously injured, two officers and Communist senator Raymond Guyot, whose wife was injured.

Several times during the day on Wednesday, the OAS attempted against the lives of political, trade union, academic, press and literary figures.

The undersigned organizations call on workers and all anti-fascists in the Paris region to proclaim their indignation, their desire to defeat fascism and impose peace in Algeria.The text was signed by the trade unions CGT, CFTC, UNEF, SGEN, FEN and SNI.

[9] Maurice Papon met on the morning of 8 February with a trade union delegation made up of André Tollet for the CGT, Robert Duvivier for the CFTC and Tony Dreyfus for the UNEF.

Papon informed them that the decree of 23 April 1961, taken at the time of the Algiers putsch of 1961, remained valid and prohibited demonstrations on the public highway.

If the number and the actions of the demonstrators made it necessary, the police should "show their energy" and use tear gas canisters and defense batons.

At the beginning of the afternoon, the unions were instructed to try to reach the Bastille by five processions formed at 6:30 p.m. at four metro stations (Ledru-Rollin, Sully - Morland, Filles du Calvaire and Gare de Lyon) and St. Antoine Street.

According to Brunet, the organizers knew that the processions had little chance of reaching the Bastille, but they believed that the police would not charge static demonstrators.

[14] One of the processions, whose head was at boulevard Voltaire 200, two hundred meters beyond the Voltaire - Charonne crossroads, heading towards the Place de la Nation, was charged by a unit of the special companies of intervention by the police headquarters when the dispersal order had just been given and the procession was beginning to disperse: "When the police charged, the first row of demonstrators had turned around and was looking in the direction of Place Léon-Blum, because they wanted to show that the demonstration was over and that we had to break up.

"[15] The action came from the 31st Division, commanded by Commissar Yser, to whom the order to charge "Disperse energetically"[16] had just been given by the Prefecture at 7:37 p.m.[17] At the same time, Commissar Dauvergne, commanding the 61st division, received the order to block the boulevard Voltaire in the direction of the place Léon-Blum, so as to force the demonstrators into a more constrained movement.

This fact seems established, and it is common ground that at least three of these grilles were found after the demonstration at the bottom of the stairs at the metro entrance and recovered there by station employees.

Some died of suffocation; in other cases, the death appeared to be due to fractures of the skull under the effect of baton blows received.

[20] The Prime Minister, Michel Debré, went to the premises of the Paris police on 12 February 1962, to "bring the testimony of his confidence and his admiration"; then, on 13 April of the same year, he wrote a letter to Papon, paying "a particular tribute to [his] qualities as a leader and organizer, as well as to the way in which [he] knew how to carry out a mission often delicate and difficult".

All activity was interrupted in the Paris region and a crowd estimated at several hundred thousand people (one million, according to L'Humanité, 400,000 according to The Times,[22] from 300,000 to 500,000 according to Le Monde and Paris Jour (the latter favorable to the government), 150,000 according to Le Figaro, from 125,000 to 150,000 according to the Prefecture), in a large and imposing demonstration from the Place de la République to the Père-Lachaise cemetery, paid tribute to the victims and attended their funerals.