Nationalism preaches that all the people speaking the same language should be grouped together in one independent country. Nationalism came to Rumania in the later 19th Century, when part of it escaped from the Ottoman Empire to form the new country. However, many Rumanian-speakers still lived outside the country. After Russia collapsed into revolution and civil war during the First World War, Rumania grabbed the mostly-Rumanian territory of Bessarabia (1918).
Anti-Semitism walked in daylight in Rumania.[1] Jews had no rights and could not be citizens. Most lived in miserable poverty. A large Jewish community lived in Bessarabia, so the change of borders brought them under Rumanian rule. In 1923, a new constitution—imposed by the Western powers—granted Jews citizenship. Nothing else changed. Many Jews pined for the Soviet Union which they believed to be a socialist utopia where religion didn’t matter.
Baruch Bruhman (1908-2004) began life as a Jewish Russian subject in Bessarabia; then became Rumanian.[2] He rejected everything about the Rumanian state: he joined the illegal Communist Party (1929); went to jail for it (1930); deserted from the army during compulsory service (1932); went to jail for it; did organizational work for the Communist Party; fled to Czechoslovakia one step ahead of the police (1936); went to France to join the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1938), but arrived too late; worked for the French Communist Party (PCF) for a year; and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion under the name Boris Holban when the Second World War broke out (1939).[3]
The Germans captured Holban in June 1940, but he escaped in December 1940 and returned to Paris. In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. All foreign Communist parties were ordered to attack the Germans to divert troops from the Russian front. The PCF knew that the Germans would shoot a lot of French civilian hostages in reprisal. Holban had spent his life on the run and had been to war. The PCF set him to recruiting immigrant workers to kill Germans. Holban found Rumanians, Hungarians, Poles, and Italians willing to fight the Germans. Most were Jews and veterans of Spain. If Germany won, they were doomed.
From August 1942 to June 1943, Holban’s group derailed trains, attacked factories, and killed 83 Germans on the streets of Paris. Both the Germans and the French police hunted the “terrorists.” Holban fell out with his PCF bosses. They wanted more attacks; he wanted to slow down while concentrating on security. In July 1943, Holban was replaced by Missak Manouchian, who accelerated attacks. Then Manouchian was caught. The PCF brought Holban back to run a rat-hunt for whoever had betrayed the group (December 1943).
Returning to now-Communist Rumania after the war, Holban soon fell into the whirlpool of the Stalinist purges. Many years later, after he had re-settled in France (1984), he was accused of betraying Manouchian. A storm followed, but Holban was proved innocent.
A puzzle: Was this Jewish resistance or Communist resistance or French resistance?
[1] Even if vampires did not. See: Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897); “Nosferatu” (dir. F. W. Murnau, 1922).
[2] Renee Poznansky, Jews in France during World War II (2001).
[3] This is very significant. In August 1939, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin did a deal with German dictator Adolf Hitler. The Soviet Union would remain neutral in any war between Germany and other countries. All foreign Communist parties were ordered to oppose their own nation’s war effort. Bruhman/Holban was defying orders.
waroftheworldblog 