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Message:: [QUOTE="GinoLR, post: 8331738, member: 128351"]I know very well this area of Paris for this is where I was living in my childhood. My high school was the Lycée Charlemagne, just next to the Saint Paul church. This neighborhood (the 4th arrondissement) is called "le Marais" (the swamp) - because it was originally a swamp area, urbanized in the Middle Ages. It is a charming area, the old Paris of the 17th c., largely untouched by Baron Haussmann who extensively modernized the whole city, but not the "Marais"... Streets are narrow, 17th and 18th c. houses are still standing, even some medieval houses, with old churches and aristocratic mansions of the 17th c. called "hotels". There are also "passages" which are not real streets but passageways from a courtyard to another. The "Passage Saint Pierre" of your ancestor has been demolished and replaced with a real street, but there are still other "passages" 100 or 200 m from there, such as "Passage Saint Paul" and "Passage Charlemagne". In the 19th c. the Marais was one of the most archaic areas of Paris, inhabited by poor people. No sewers, no running water, no light because the streets are narrow. It became a haven for poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially Jews from Austrian and Russian empires. It became a Jewish quarter and still is. When I was a schoolboy in Lycée Charlemagne a good half of my schoolmates were Jewish, most of them Ashkenazi. I remember the names : Rosenbaum, Klatzmann, Rachbenbach, Hagerman, Weil, Wasman, etc...They did not attend school on Jewish holidays, it was funny, the classroom was half empty on these days. Many of these Jewish immigrants ran small tailor businesses. I see that your great-grandfather Jules was in the business too, for his occupation was "casquetier", that is "cap maker". The Marais area has not changed much, it is still largely inhabited by Jewish families but, of course, housing and living conditions have been considerably improved during the 20th c. It is probably for this reason that the Passage Saint Pierre was demolished and replaced with a real street and decent buildings, while other sectors were just refurbished and modernized, keeping their romantic "old Paris" character. Of course, during WW2, the Jewish community suffered much from persecution by German occupiers and French Vichyst collaborators. Fortunately not all of them were rounded up and deported, but many were : in the Marais there are inscriptions on school doors reminding how many children had been arrested in this school. Fortunately, some avoided arrest and deportation, or were lucky enough to come back from the camps in 1945... Like many central urban popular areas, the neighborhood has been now gentrified but has kept its Jewish identity. Another minority, the gay community, is also living there. If you are Jewish AND gay (and don't mind dwelling in small but romantic and historical apartments), that's the place to live in Paris! (EDIT) Before living in Passage Saint Pierre your great-grandparents lived 8 rue d'Ormesson. It's just 150 m from Passage Saint Pierre... The building 8 rue d'Ormesson is still there and is obviously a 19th c., if not even earlier building: these are not the standards of the 20th c. Of course it has been refurbished since the 1880s. No doubt, the modest apartment of your ancestors is still inhabited.[ATTACH=full]1476882[/ATTACH] ... and the former 1 Passage Saint Pierre, judging from the blog you found, was demolished c. 1950. There is a modern building in its place. The ground level is a Monoprix (a downtown supermarket), the Monoprix in which my own mother did most of her shopping since the 1970s ![/QUOTE]

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