Boris Holban
Boris Holban was a Russian-born Franco-Romanian communist known for his role in the French Resistance as the leader of FTP-MOI group in Paris and for l’Affaire Manouchian controversy of the 1980s.
Communist activist
Holban was born as Baruch Bruhman to a working class Jewish family in the town of Otaci in Bessarabia, a province of the vast Russian Empire. Bessarabia had a Romanian majority with a substantial minority of Ashkenazim. In addition to Yiddish, Bruhman was also fluent in Russian and Romanian. In 1918, Bessarabia became part of Romania. In 1923, Bruhman became a Romanian citizen when a new constitution came in that allowed Jews to be citizens. The Kingdom of Romania was a deeply Francophile country and growing up in 1920s Romania, Bruhman learned French and came to be heavily influenced by French culture long before he ever actually went to France. Like many other Romanian Jewish intellectuals at the time, Bruhman was attracted to Communism as it promised a utopian society where religion, ethnicity and nationality would no longer exist, thus rendering the "Jewish Question" moot.The Romanian historian Vladimir Tismaneanu wrote that the Jewish community of Bessarabia was especially attracted to Communism as a "rejected minority" in greater Romania. Many Bessarabian Jews believed that the Soviet Union was a humanist society where the "Jewish Question" no longer mattered as it was widely believed in the Bessarabian Jewish community that ethnic, national and religious differences in the Soviet Union had all been subsumed by a common proletarian culture. Bessarabia was also a very backward region where most people lived in dire poverty, and the belief that the Soviet Union was an egalitarian society that was rapidly modernizing was appealing to many Bessarabian Jews living in destitution. The British historian Gavin Bowd wrote: "Like many Jews, he became acutely aware of the persecution of his community. A double sense of oppression therefore pushed Bruhman to join the PCR and engage in political and trade union activity."
As a young man, Bruhman joined the illegal PCR in 1929 and was imprisoned in 1930 for a short time for his political activities. In 1932, he deserted from the Romanian Army and was forced to live underground as a fugitive before being captured and imprisoned as a deserter. In 1936, he fled Romania for Czechoslovakia as the police were again looking for him as a Communist. In Czechoslovakia, Bruhman studied textile engineering at a technical college. On 28 December 1937, King Carol II of Romania appointed Octavian Goga of the extreme right-wing National Christian Party as the prime minister. During his short period in office, Goga disfranchised the Jewish community. On 22 January 1938 the government of Prime Minister Goga stripped all Romanian Jews who had acquired Romanian citizenship in 1923 of their citizenship, rendering Bruhman together most of the rest of the Romanian Jewish community stateless. Losing his Romanian citizenship to a certain extent estranged him from Romania.
In July 1938, Bruhman travelled to France, and he joined the PCF, intending to fight in the Spanish civil war. In his memoirs, he recalled being very excited about coming to France, which he called "the land of the Revolution and of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the land of the Commune and the Popular Front". Paris was the principle transit point for volunteers for the International Brigades fighting for the Spanish republic as despite its professed neutrality, the French government during the Popular Front period leaned in a pro-Republican neutrality and ignored the activities of the Comintern in sending volunteers to Spain. By the time he arrived in Paris, the International Brigades were in the process of being disbanded, and he did not fight in Spain. Bruhman became very involved in recruiting Romanians living in France for the PCF and his roommate was Albert Youdine, a Romanian Jewish intellectual who was also a PCF member. For both men, lacking families and friends in Paris, the PCF became a sort of surrogate family that allowed them to integrate into French society.
In September 1939, he enlisted in the First Regiment of Foreign Volunteers of the French Army under the alias Boris Holban, the name that he came to be known as. As a stateless person, Holban very much feared that he might be deported from France to Romania, and he knew that the French state was likely to grant French citizenship to foreigners who enlisted in the French Army. In June 1940, he was taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht. He later escaped from a POW camp in Metz in December 1940. Holban's escape was assisted by a nun, Sister Hélène Studler. Through he was a Communist and atheist, Holban always treasured the medal of the Virgin Mary given to him by Sister Studler, a woman he portrayed as very saintly in a biography of her written by him that was published in 1999.
In the Resistance
In 1941, he joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, the armed wing of the PCF. The Franco-Israeli historian Renée Poznanski described Holban as a "militant Communist". Holban welcomed Operation Barbarossa as it allowed him to undertake undercover work against Nazi Germany. Holban's work as a member of the illegal Romanian Communist Party and his experiences of Romanian prisons made him accustomed to undercover work and thus well suited for the resistance. In April 1942, the PCF created an armed wing of its Main d'Oeuvre Immigrée representing immigrants called the FTP-MOI under the leadership of Holban. Bowd wrote: "Bruhman became part of a resistance network in which Romanians played a disproportionate role." Holban divided the FTP-MOI into four detachments-the first consisting of Hungarians and Romanians, the second of Poles, the third of Italians and the fourth being a mixed group of various other nationalities. The intelligence chief of the FTP-MOI was Holban's fellow Romanian, Cristina Luca Boico, who had the responsibility of selecting targets and gathering as much information as possible about the targets, through Holban always had the ultimate power of decision about whatever attack would go through or not.One of Holban's superiors, the Franco-Polish Communist Adam Rayski observed that a disproportionate number of the members of the FTP-MOI were veterans of the International Brigades who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, providing a great advantage as these were men who had experienced combat and were well accustomed to handling guns and bombs. Rayski also noted that a disproportionate number of the FTP-MOI were Jewish like himself, which provided a certain desperation to their efforts since for them, the victory of the Third Reich would mean their extermination. Rayski argued that for ordinary French people, if Nazi Germany won the war, France would remain occupied but the French people would continue to exist, while for himself, Holban, and all the other Jews in the FTP-MOI, they would die in the event of a German victory, making their underground struggle a matter of existential importance. Rayski recalled: "We brought together many young Jews without parents or homes in action groups of three people. During the winter of 1942–43, we had about 300 people, mostly young people, in the Jewish groups of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans".
On 5 August 1942, in an attack organized by Holban, three Romanians belonging to the FTP-MOI tossed grenades into a group of Luftwaffe men watching a football game at the Jean-Bouin Stadium in Paris, killing eight and wounding 13. The Germans claimed three were killed and 42 wounded; this let them execute more hostages, as Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle demanded three hostages be shot for every dead German and two for each of the wounded. The Germans did not have that many hostages in custody and settled for executing 88 people on 11 August 1942. In the first six months of 1943, Holban organised more than 93 different attacks in Paris. Under Holban's leadership, the FTP-MOI between January–June 1943 were responsible for 14 train derailments, 34 acts of arson or bombings of buildings, and 43 assassinations in Paris. The FTP-MOI became an elite group within the FTP that was always assigned the most dangerous missions, which Holban regarded as an honor. Bowd wrote in 2014: "The detachments commanded by Bruhman turned out to be the most courageous and deadly arm of the Communist resistance in the Paris area: as foreigners, and often Jews, they had little to lose in occupied France, while a long experience of clandestine activity and civil war had made them well-prepared." The French police formed two special units to track down the resistance, namely the Brigades spéciales, which were divided into Brigade spéciale 1 for French resistance groups and Brigade spéciale 2, whose sole task was to track down the FTP-MOI. Brigade spéciale 2 used the favorite filature methods of the French police, carefully watching one member of the FTP-MOI, if necessary for months, to learn about his or her contacts, and then following the others. The degree of importance attached to hunting down the FTP-MOI could be seen in that Brigade spéciale 2 had an average of 100 policemen assigned just to watch the movements of every one FTP-MOI member under surveillance.
In July 1943, Holban was replaced as the leader of the FTP-MOI by the Armenian Communist Missak Manouchian as he believed that the organisation needed to slow down the pace of attacks to focus more on organisating itself as the police pressure was growing more intense by the day, which were contrary to the party's orders for more and more attacks. Holban's version of events was disputed by his superior, Henri Rol-Tanguy. Rol-Tanguy later stated: "il n’a jamais exigé quoi que ce soit des FTP-MOI et qu’il n’ a jamais démis ou nommé quiconque leur appartenant". Bowd that regardless of who was telling the truth that it seems that Holban had some sort of dispute with the FTP leadership. Holban was not on the best of terms with either Manouchian or the political commissar of the FTP-MOI, Joseph Davidowicz, who had named Manouchian as Hoban's successor as he felt that Manouchian was more aggressive.
Despite his demotion, Holban remained active in the FTP-MOI. On 28 September 1943, the FTP-MOI scored its most spectacular success with the assassination in Paris of SS Standartenführer Julius Ritter, whose role in working with the Service du travail obligatoire to bring forced labor to Germany had made him one of the most hated men in France. Holban had planned the assassination, through he was no longer the FTP-MOI commander by the time it occurred. The Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was enraged by Ritter's assassination and came to follow the French police investigation of the FTP-MOI. Himmler had SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Hagen visit Vichy to personally tell the French Premier Pierre Laval that Himmler wanted to see the immediate end of the Jewish "terrorist" attacks in France and that the "foreign Jews should rendered incapable of doing further harm". Laval in turn promised Hagen that the number one priority of the French police was to wipe out the FTP-MOI.
Holban left Paris to lead a maquis band in the forests of the Ardennes made up of young Frenchmen escaping service with the STO and escaped Soviet POWs. After Manouchian was arrested in November 1943, Holban resumed leadership of the FTP-MOI in December 1943. Holban assigned Luca Boico to lead the investigation into who betrayed the groupe Manouchian, which led them to the political commissar, Joseph Davidowicz, whom it was discovered had cracked under torture after being arrested by Brigade spéciale 2 in October 1943. Davidowicz was stabbed to death as a result during a meeting in a safehouse in Bourg-la-Reine on 28 December 1943.
After arriving at the safehouse, Holban confronted Davidowicz with the evidence gathered by Luca Boico; after some denials he finally confessed. Holban later recalled:
"One of us read our conclusions to him before he was executed. Once this sad and grisly encounter was over, we had to act to ensure the safehouse was not compromised and that the tenants were not exposed to any consequences-a safehouse was particularly valuable to the party. What happened next was a nightmare. In the middle of the night, under curfew, six armed men dragged the body. If we had met a routine patrol, we would had been done for. Exhausted, we arrived at a piece of wasteland, dumped the body, and did our best to cover it. At six in the morning with the curfew over, we finally left. Only the gun remained in the house. In pairs, we got on the train back to Paris".About the charge that it was unjust to execute a man who had only given information to the police under torture, Holban wrote: "We must not judge Davidowicz with today's eyes and today's attitudes. At the time, it would have been simply inconceivable to let him live".
During the liberation of Paris between 19 and 25 August 1944, Holban took part in the revolt and led a group which seized the Romanian consulate in Paris together with the Romanian tourist office, both of which were staffed by officials loyal to the regime of Ion Antonescu. Alongside Holban, the seizures were co-commanded by Cristina Luca Boico, Gheorghe Vasilichi and Ion Marinescu. At the time, it was announced that this was intended as the first step towards the overthrow of Antonescu. However, on 23 August, in a coup led by King Michael, Antonescu was dismissed as prime minister by the king, who appointed a new government that signed an armistice with the Allies and switched sides in the war. After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, Holban rejoined the French Army as the commander of battalion 51/22, leading a unit mostly made up of FTP-MOI men that was dissolved in June 1945.