On 21 August 1941 Pierre Georges, who then went by the name of Frédo, and his companion Gilbert Brustlein, helped by two other members of the French Resistance shot and killed a German soldier named Alfons Moser when he was boarding a train at the Barbès station at eight in the morning. The killing was in revenge for the execution of Samuel Tyszelman for taking part in an anti-German demonstration. This was the start of a series of assassinations and reprisals that resulted in five hundred French hostages being executed in the next few months. In 1943, Georges was captured and tortured but escaped.
