Jean Jerome

Jean Jerome , pseudonym of Mikhaël or Michel Feintuch, born in 1906, deceased in 1990.

Biography

Jew of Galicie, of a family of 7 children whose father was stallholder. Marked at the beginning of its life by religious education and a Judaism militant, it learns how in the denominational schools to translate the bible of Hebrew into Yiddish. Mikhaël starts to work very early like small employee. The war of 14-18 is then finished, and Galicie is become again Polish. Mikhaël syndicates quickly and attends the clandestine Communist party dice its sixteenth year. Twice stopped, it does not find any more work and leaves Poland to escape from the military service and its disciplinary battalions which inevitably await a revolutionary militant.

It is fixed in Belgium as from 1927, operation with the rolling mills Hope-Londoz and studying at the university of Liege, it is difficult to know exactly starting from which date, Before or after its departure of Poland, it is in direct connection with the Komintern. Expelled from Belgium in 1928, it passes clandestinely to France. Supports enable him to find work, and thus to regularize its situation. Workman electrician in a company of telephone, it takes part in the activities of the CGTU and the direction of the Polish commission of the MOE (foreign Labor) near the central committee of the French Party. In 1931, it is expelled of France in Belgium, but regains the Paris region clandestinely. There will remain clandestine long years. One will not seek to know in detail his activities of this period. Its engagement with the CGTU and the Profintern, the international one of the trade unions, is substantial. It meets in 1933 Fried, the representative of the Comintern in Paris. In 1937, the future Jean Jerome is implied in the section of assistance which organizes the sendings of weapons and weaponry in republican Spain. It could be in contact dice this moment with Joanovici.

When the Republic of Spain crumbles, the networks of assistance to the effort of war of the republicans is reorientated towards the assistance with the refugees who arrived to France per tens of thousands. At side, and perhaps behind this humanitarian action, it is without any doubt implied in certain transfers like those of the gold and the jewels of the crown of Spain.

It is in any case obvious that he is somebody of very important in the technical apparatus of the Party, since it is him whom Duclos makes seek as soon as he returns to Paris in June 1940. He is the man to whom one must address, to get as well money as paper for clandestine printing works. It is at that time that Mikhael Feintuch takes the pseudonym of Jean Jerome , which will remain to him until the end of its life. The historian Philippe Robrieux thinks that Jean Jerome was designated to replace Ceretti, the former head of France-Navigation and the black case of the Comintern, then pointed out to Moscow, like Thorez. This interpretation is probable.

In addition to these technical responsibilities, Jean Jerome also establishes, from March in May 41, the contacts with personalities which one could describe as intellectuals antifascists. Address book of the Comintern, or relations of the medium of Montparnasse of his/her brother-in-law, the scenario writer Jean Vigo? difficult to slice. One finds Jean Jerome and his relations in the first contacts with the gaullists.

Jean Jerome is stopped in April 43, at the time of a contact with Betka Brikner, a woman who made the connections of Gronowski, national leader of EGO.

Jean Jerome always remained a a little mysterious character, and who, according to those which cotoyé it, enjoyed to cultivate around him a share of mystery which is reinforced by the occult role that he played within the party until in the Seventies. It seems to be much more than simple administrator who is his only official title. It is him which kept the upper hand on all the business enterprises and the businesses of export-importation, circulating unceasingly of Is in West, even during the cold war, brewing innumerable businesses in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Its intimacy with the leaders of the Party, Thorez and Duclos, its frequent presence with the meetings of the central committee of which he was not member, its freedom of tone, suggest that he was more than one Minister of Finance. Just as the confidence from which it profited obviously on behalf of Soviet, its personal involvement in the treatment of certain internal businesses made think that it could have been the eye of Moscow, even a kind of proconsul, like had been to it Fried pre-war period. These assumptions are reinforced by the aspect of the character who, according to the terms of Robrieux, walks everywhere his face hard and worrying, overcome kinds of eyeglasses and its glance in gimlet which seems to want to plunge inside each one… it appears with those which attend it like a leader of coolness, icy and pitiless when it is needed, realistic, skilful, dominating and sure of him, but also as a jovial man who can show himself at the same time interesting in the conversation and good companion with his close friends. It had kept until the end a light accent which betrayed its origins.

In the biography which it gave to J.Maitron for the dictionary of the labor movement, Jean Jerome mentions for the post-war period only responsibilities of the intellectual type: Reconstitution of the CDLP (Center of diffusion of the book and the press), creation of the social editions and a network of bookstores, reconstitution of the recording company " Song of Monde" and cinematographic company " Cinéfrance" …

Jean Jerome dies in 1990. He had been decorated with the medal of Resistance, the Military Cross and the legion of honor.

Autobiographical works

JEROME Jean, the Share of the Men , Acropolis, 1983
JEROME Jean, Clandestine (1940-44) the , Acropolis, 1986

Sources

R. Lemarquis, J. Maitron, Cl. Pennetier, the Bibliographical Dictionary of the Labor movement French , Working Editions.
ROBRIEUX Philippe, Interior History of the Communist party , 4 Volumes (1920-45), Beech, 1980-84.
OF CHAMBOST Emmanuel, direction of PCF in clandestinity (1941-44), Harmattan, 1997

See too

History of the French Communist party

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