Gang des Tractions Avant

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The Gang des Tractions Avant was a criminal gang in the Pigalle quarter of Paris, made up of surviving members of the Carlingue militia, lapsed police officers and criminals from the French Resistance. Most of them had moved from collaboration with the German occupiers to the Resistance, and then moved into organised crime—though even if their milieu changed, their behaviour and methods remained the same. The gang was named after its preferred vehicle, the Citroën 11CV "Traction". [1]

Quartier Pigalle human settlement in France

Pigalle is an area in Paris around the Place Pigalle, on the border between the 9th and the 18th arrondissements. It is named after the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714–1785).

Paris Capital of France

Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris is one of Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts.

Carlingue

The Carlingue were French auxiliaries who worked for the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst and Geheime Feldpolizei during the occupation of France in the Second World War. The group, which was based at 93, rue Lauriston in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, was active between 1941 and 1944. It was founded by Pierre Bonny, a corrupt ex-policeman. Later it was jointly led by Henri Lafont and Pierre Loutrel, two professional criminals who had been active in the French underworld before the war.

Contents

Its methods were largely derived from those of the Bonnot Gang and were mostly continued by a number of other gangs, notably the gang des postiches. The Gang des Tractions Avant gave rise to the writings of Alphonse Boudard and Roger Borniche, the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Deray, a TV series by Josée Dayan, and a board game by Serge Laget and Alain Munoz.

The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912. Composed of individuals who identified with the emerging illegalist milieu, the gang used cutting-edge technology not yet available to the French police.

The Gang des postiches was a famous team of bank robbers that operated in Paris between 1981 and 1986. With a rare boldness, they attacked about thirty banks.

Alphonse Boudard Novelist and screenwriter

Alphonse Boudard was a French novelist and playwright. He won the 1977 Prix Renaudot for Les Combattants du petit bonheur. Boudard's 1995 novel Dying childhood was awarded and recognised by the French Academy with a Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française.

Members

Its most famous members were

Pierre Loutrel French resistance member

Pierre Loutrel, better known by his nickname of "Pierrot le fou" was France's first "public enemy number one" and one of the leaders of the Gang des tractions.

Émile "Mimile" Buisson was a French gangster, and French public enemy No. 1 for 1950. A member of the French Gang des Tractions Avant, Buisson was responsible for over thirty murders and a hundred robberies. Buisson was pursued and caught by French detective of the Sûreté Nationale Roger Borniche, and was executed in 1956 by the guillotine. Borniche's memoirs on the pursuit, Flic Story, were later made into a film of the same name in 1975, with Buisson portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Guillotine apparatus designed for carrying out executions by beheading

A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to quickly fall and forcefully decapitate the victim with a single, clean pass so that the head falls into a basket below.

Bibliography

Max Clos was a 20th-century French journalist and the former editor-in-chief of Le Figaro from 1975 to 1988.

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