Léon Blum
André Léon Blum (9 April 1872 – 30 March 1950 in Paris) was a Jewish socialist politician and three-times Prime Minister of France: 1936–37, 1938, and 1946–47.
Early life
Léon Blum was one of the five sons of a wealthy Jewish ribbon manufacturer who had moved to Paris from Alsace. His parents' house was in the rue Saint Denis, in the 'soft-goods' district of Paris, but one which, in Blum's own words, 'was also a popular quarter still haunted by the memories of Republican insurrections'. The most important influence of his early years was his maternal grandmother, known in the family as la Communarde because of her fiery sympathy for the Communist Commune of 1871. From the earliest possible age she made young Léon into a Socialist and trained him in the cult of revolutionary 'heroes'. Blum was educated at the Lycée Charlemagne and then the École Normale Supérieure.[1]
Spanish Civil War
Leftist Wikipedia claims in its article on Blum that he adopted a policy of neutrality regarding the Spanish Civil War. Despite that, Wikipedia in its article "Foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War" states that the Léon Blum government provided covert military aid such as aircraft, pilots, and engineers to the Republican side, and other sources state that only pressure from internal and external anti-far Leftists prevented Blum from more extensive interventions. Despite its official policy of non-intervention, France sent far more volunteers to the Republican side than any other country.
Wartime fiction
- Immediately after the Red Army over-ran Majdanek on July 23, 1944, the Soviet-Jewish reporter Constantin Simonov wrote a report describing, among other things, the murder of former French Prime Minister Léon Blum in the same camp in the spring of 1943. In writing his report, Simonov relied on two eye-witnesses, P. Mikhailovic and C. Elinski, who described Blum's last moments "in great detail". Radio Moscow gave solemn credence to this story: "Radio Moscow reported the death of former Prime Minister Léon Blum, seventy years of age, who fell a victim to racist barbarism like so many of his fellow faithful." The French Communist newspaper Fraternité also reported the death in August 1944. The report of Léon Blum's murder in Majdanek was a total fabrication. In reality, Blum was deported to Buchenwald in 1943 and then transferred to Dachau, where he was liberated on May 4, 1945.[2]
See also
Sources
- ↑ Werth, Alexander, The Destiny of France, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1937, p.276.
- ↑ National Socialist Concentration Camps https://codoh.com/library/document/1171/?lang=en
