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.
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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