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Vol. 81/No. 47 December 18, 2017
(Books of the Month column)
Abram Leon: Example for working-class youth today
The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon is one of
Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for December. In the opening
“Biographical Sketch of Abram Leon,” Ernest Germain records Leon’s life
as a militant in the Jewish Socialist Zionist youth in Belgium, his
break with Zionism and his leading role in the Fourth International,
formed in 1938 to build on the revolutionary continuity of the Russian
Bolshevik Party led by V.I. Lenin. Ernest Germain was the underground
name for Ernest Mandel, who joined the Belgian party in 1939 at the age
of 16. Copyright © 1970 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY ERNEST GERMAIN
In the course of his researches, [Leon] forwarded several articles to
the Belgian Trotskyist weekly, La lutte ouvrière (The workers struggle).
The editors of this periodical established contact with him. …
From this moment on, the story of Leon was linked with the history of
the Trotskyist movement in Belgium. The principal inspirer of the party,
he served as political secretary from the time the first executive
committee was set up. As a journalist, with an incisive, lively, and
clear style, he made his readers feel that he understood thoroughly
every problem with which he dealt. The editorial board of the illegal
Voie de Lénine (Lenin’s road) worked under his direction and its first
issues contained a masterly study from his pen of the structure and
future of the various imperialist powers. In this study he traced the
main line of future events in the war exactly in the way in which they
later unfolded. An exemplary organizer and educator, he guided the
branches, tried to build the party under conditions of illegality, and
concentrated with infinite patience on winning the confidence of workers
districts and on forming a recognized and responsible national
leadership on the basis of this confidence.
I met him personally for the first time on the first central committee
of the party which was reconstituted by his efforts in July 1941. …
As soon as the party was reconstituted, Leon began to worry about
international relations. An internationalist to his marrow, he found it
intolerable that the Belgian section should live in isolation from its
brother movements in Europe and throughout the world. The need for
contact with the other sections of the Fourth International did not
arise solely from his desire to compare the political line of the
Belgian party with that of its brother parties; it also corresponded to
a very clear realization that the great military and revolutionary
shocks would in the future inevitably assume a continental character and
that no political leadership could any longer function effectively on a
national scale. …
This period of illegal activity under the most dangerous conditions,
when one’s heart involuntarily jumped each time the doorbell rang or an
automobile pulled up close to the house, was a time of extreme nervous
tension, of continuous waiting for an explosion that would finally make
a breach in the walls and bring closer the day on which would explode
all the gates of the enormous prison into which Europe had been
transformed. We awaited this explosion from the very depths of this
prison. Our thoughts were centered on the reserves of revolutionary
energy stored up during the long years of suffering by the proletariat
on the Old Continent. When Leon personally assumed the direction of
party work among the proletarian soldiers of the Wehrmacht or when he
attended meetings of the underground factory committees set up in the
Liège metallurgical plants, he invariably invested these various tasks
with a meaning which transcended the present; he wished to sow that the
party would be able to reap when the decisive moment came. …
Then came the downfall of Mussolini. We finally felt the rising wind of
the revolution; our activities multiplied. Each of us expended himself
unsparingly; the culmination was approaching. There took place a number
of secret trips to France where Leon participated actively in the work
of the European Conference of the Fourth International in February 1944.
We halted our work of self-preparation; it was now a question of
intervening actively in the workers struggles which were erupting
everywhere. In the Charleroi region, the Trotskyist organization took
the initiative in organizing an illegal movement of miners delegates.
This movement spread rapidly to about fifteen pits: in complete
illegality the party’s ideas began to take root among the masses.
Understanding the full importance of this movement, Leon wished to
follow it step by step. He decided to locate himself in Charleroi in
order to collaborate daily with the revolutionary workers of the region.
News of the Allied landing in Europe and fears lest connections between
the various regions be broken, hastened the preparation for the shift.
After living for two years in complete illegality, he went to settle at
Charleroi with his wife. On the very evening of his arrival the house
into which he had moved was searched by the police. He was arrested and
sent to prison.
Then followed long days of moral and physical torture. The Gestapo used
every means to make him talk. He was torn with worry about the party
which had lost five of its first rank leaders within the period of two
years. He succeeded in gaining the confidence of one of the soldiers of
the guard. A contact was established with the party. The letters which
he sent are the most convincing testimonial that in the most difficult
hours of his life all his thoughts were centered on the organization,
its immediate projects, its future. He wanted so much to continue his
work shoulder to shoulder with his comrades. Destiny willed it
otherwise. The rapidity with which he was deported frustrated the
preparations to effect his escape undertaken by the party and he was
flung into the hellish place where five million human beings were to
perish — Auschwitz.
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