Hommage à Michel Hollard
Traveller, voyageur,
you who will leave Eurostar at La Gare du Nord
or prepare to board it
take or spare five minutes to step outside
turning left and left again
into la rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis
where you will find on the right-hand side
next to an Indian restaurant, a café in 1944,
the plaque which records that here
Michel Hollard, leader of the resistance group Agir,
was arrested by the Gestapo with three others of his group.
Tortured he gave nothing away.
Deported to Neuengamme concentration camp
he survived.
Want more?
It was he with others of his group who discovered
the launching ramps
of Hitler’s V for Vengeance rockets
so that they could be bombed out of action
and most of London saved.
Check it out.