Henri Krasucki

Henri Krasucki (born the September 2nd 1924 with Wołomin, in Poland - died the January 24th 2003) is a trade unionist French, former general secretary of the CGT.

Biography

Youth

His/her Isaac father (in Polish Izaak), working tricotor, trade-union activist and policy, fleeing the Pogrom S, took it along to France with his wife, Lea Borszczewska, worker of the textile and militant communist, in 1926. His/her father was stopped for sabotage the January 20th 1943 and was interned with Drancy; he will be off-set the February 13rd with Birkenau, and gauze as of his arrival.

In his childhood, Henri Krasucki was “one of most famous the " pionniers" patronage of Bellevilloise”, one of the companies most representative of the French co-operative movement. In 1999, it will evoke the “fraternal communist patronage” of its district. Whereas his/her parents wished to see it continuing studies, he preferred to be made once engage at Renault his C.A.P. of fitter out of pocket; its qualities of trade unionist quickly pointed out it.

Resistance and deportation

Member of the Jewish Resistance, it engaged with the immigrant Main-d'oeuvre (ME) of the Communist party under the pseudonym of “titmouse”. Henri Krasucki dealt of the executives and the recruitment of the young people. At the beginning of March, his/her Maurice brother was killed at the time of an attack against a detachment of the Wehrmacht. Decree the March 23rd 1943, it is delivered to the Gestapo which stops his/her mother and the other resistant ones. Tortured with the Prison of Fresnes, where it is retained six weeks, it does not speak. It was off-set with the camp of Jawischowitz, additional of Auschwitz then to Buchenwald. Its convoy since Drancy, number 55, of the June 23rd 1943, off-set 1.002 Jews, including 160 children of less than 18 years. Only 86 people of this convoy survived the Shoah.

Henri Krasucki returns from there the April 28th 1945, “just in time to express on May 1st”, as he will say with humor.

Political commitments

After war, it was one of the leaders of the French Communist party, but its principal engagement remains trade-union. In 1949, he is secretary of the Departmental union of the CGT of the the Seine. In 1953 it enters to the federal office of the Seine of PCF; then at the central committee of PCF in 1956. In 1961, it enters to the confederal office of CGT then becomes director of the working Life (the “VO”), the newspaper of the trade union. In 1964, he becomes member of the political office of PCF. It was a time had a presentiment of in 1967 to take the direction of the CGT, but Georges Séguy was preferred to him. Henri Krasucki succeeded to him in 1982 at the time of the 41e congress, transmitting the function in 1992 to the 44e congress with Louis Viannet. In 10 years, manpower of CGT melted of half with approximately 700 000 members.

At the beginning of his mandate, Henri Krasucki places himself as a principal interlocutor of the capacity, until the departure of the communist Ministers for the government in 1984, where it becomes again the spokesperson of social dissatisfaction. Until the beginning of the year 1980, it defended the orientations of the most rigid PC, which led it to be opposed in a way felted to Georges Séguy. Indeed, since 1978, this last sought to preserve the CGT of the political consequences resulting from the rupture of the Union of the left, which has occurred in October 1977. Séguy in vain endeavoured to inflect the sectarian line of PCF. Krasucki succeeds to him not without internal resistances. Convinced internationalist, it was elected in 1986 vice-president of the world Trade union federation (FSM), of which it had evil to accept the disaffiliation of CGT in 1995. However, it could start on the end of its mandate a catch of distance with the PCF, which will be worth with the trade union of much better supporting the evolutions of the Nineties than the party. Thus, silencer on East Berlin (1953), Budapest (1956) and the Spring of Prague (1968), it condemns after the 43e congress in 1989, the repression of the place Tienanmen in China.

Caricatured by its puppet of the Bébête Show on television, it was a man cultivated, insane of opera and admiror of Eluard, rigorous, enthusiast of freedom and justice. Always available, he was recognized for his human qualities and like a vigorous negotiator (important actor of the agreements on the compensation for the Chômage and the right to the formation, in 1970), but also a sharp partisan of the hard line of his party and Grève.

He was member of the political office of PCF until in 1996. The national secretary of PCF Marie-George Buffet greeted with her death, “with emotion and much of respect”, the memory of the “comrade Henri Krasucki”. The president Jacques Chirac paid homage “to the son of Polish immigrants whose youth was very early marked by the combat for freedom and France and who knew the drama of the deportation whereas it was not twenty years old”.

Henri Krasucki was buried with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise, near his mother, Lea, and of his sister " Lili" , close to the square of the deportees opposite the wall the Federate ones.

A place Henri Krasucki was inaugurated the June 23rd 2005 with Paris in the XXe district, with the crossroads of the Levert streets, Envierges, the Pond, the Crowns and the Cascades, close to the park of Belleville. He had lived a long time with 107 rue des Couronnes, on the place which bears its name today.

Quotation

“There is no more violent means of coercion of the employers against the employees than unemployment. ”

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