Molnár’s Paris: Molnárs Move to Belleville

The Molnárs were forced to leave Vera’s bourgeois family estate to make room for a relative and his young girlfriend, who had an unexpected pregnancy and needed to marry right away. Given some money for rent, Vera and François were confronted with the harsh realities of Parisian real estate. They found a one-room apartment in Belleville “with a tiny kitchen and the toilet on the landing. Horrible. But we still drew and it still worked. We survived,” she later recollected. When asked at the time where she lived, Vera replied, “You wouldn’t believe me; it’s horrendous. Belleville.”