Boris Holban

Boris Holban (20 April 1908 – 27 June 2004) 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.

Holban was born as Baruch Bruhman to a working class Jewish family in the town of Otaci in Bessarabia (modern Moldova), a province of the vast Russian empire.

Bessarabia had a Romanian majority with a substantial minority of Ashkenazim (Yiddish-speaking Jews).

In addition to Yiddish, Bruhman was also fluent in Russian and Romanian.

In 1918, Bessarabia became part of Romania.

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."

In 1923, Bruhman became a Romanian citizen when a new constitution came in that allowed Jews to be citizens.

As a young man, Bruhman joined the illegal PCR (Partidul Comunist Român-Romanian Communist Party) 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 (Parti communiste français-French Communist Party), 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.

In 1941, he joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), 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 ("Migrant Workforce") 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.

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.