I've been in many many demonstrations in my life, yes: against the Algerian War when I was a teenager, then marching for three weeks in May 68, later on demonstrating to stop the war in Vetnam and so on. But today, in Paris (and all over France) it was a unique march in the history of this country. An old man at a window screamed «I have not seen so many people on the streets of Paris since...the Liberation of Paris.» I was not there in 1944, but today I saw millions of people - nobody can tell how many, too many to be counted - marching sadly, quietly, silently, respectfully. Like in funerals.

A giant pencil was raised in the crowd in memory of the cartoonists and other workers slaughtered by the terrorists at Charlie-Hebdo newspaper. On this pencil you could read «NOT AFRAID» And everybody has its «Je suis Charlie» sticker on a coat, on a sign, on a piece of paper. We are all Charlie.

The immense crowd was so peaceful. The silence was only broken off and on by people singing together the Marseillaise, these people who were young, old, rich and not rich, voting for the right and voting for the left, or not voting. All against terrorism, all against the killing of humorists, of three policemen, of four Jewish hostages. Against Barbarians.

Until today it was hard to imagine that this French nation could be so generous, so together. Discovering a France we have not seen, we did not know it existed. A historic day of course when 44 leaders of the world travel to Paris to march together and mourn, for one silent minute, the 17 victims of this terrorist attack on Paris, the leaders of the Western World, and African leaders, and Netanyahu and Abbas...

They were 3 or 4 or 5 million people marching for hours on the streets of France who never thought their counstry was so much in love with its democracy, its Republic, its «Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité» and so willing to live together. They were sad, and moved and also very happy too, to be here, feeling the warmth of a crowd sharing the same values: no to hatred, no to racism, to anti-Semitism, to extremism.

The whole government has been grieving also for the Jewish victims killed at a Kosher market, since Friday evening. But this day ended by another historic event. A the Great Synagogue of La Victoire, together, ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, and president François Hollande, sitting next to Benyamin Netanyahu. To mourn not only the four Jewish victims, but also the journalists massacred at Charlie-Hebdo office, the three policemen shot to death by the terrorists, the four French Jews who were shopping for Shabbat, killed in a Kosher shop. Jewish prayers for the 17 victims, all of them. A «universal» communion. And in this monumental synagogue of Paris, when people stood and all of sudden started singing the Marseillaise, I cried. It was a day of crying and thinking. And hoping

Annette Lévy-Willard