Maurice Harmel

Maurice Harmel , born on August 12th, 1884 in Turenne (Corrèze), died in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, on August 19th, 1944, was, at the origin of its militancy, a French trade unionist of the postal and telecommunications authorities. Become journalist, he wrote in the press of the CGT, defending the theses of Leon Jouhaux.

biographical reference marks

the post-office employee trade unionist

Maurice Harmel was the pseudonym which Louis Antoine Thomas took, with the beginnings of the year 1920, to collaborate in the confederal press of CGT. Made postal and telecommunications authorities, its journalistic vocation was first of all exerted, as from 1907, in the pages of the social War, weekly Socialist and trade unionist directed by Gustave Herve. Militant trade unionist, Louis Thomas took share with the postal strikes of 1909. Revoked following the second movement striker this year, in May 1909, it turned definitively to journalism, mainly in the interprofessional press of CGT.

the journalist member of the C.G.T.

April 27th, 1911, it is among the collaborators of the first number of the daily newspaper the Battle sydicalist and becomes one of the close relations of Leon Jouhaux. It was located in the current known as " réformiste" , which defied revolutionary phraseology. During debates within the trade union movement, it took after the Great War an important place in the defense of the expensive ideas with Leon Jouhaux, in particular out of economic material. However it did not occupy any official place in the Confederation. He wrote in the trade-union bodies, the Workshop , the People . In March 1938, the team close to Leon Jouhaux launched a weekly magazine: Messidor , Maurice Harmel was editor association. According to an opposite evolution of that of Rene Belin, Maurice Harmel defended starting from this media base a policy of firmness vis-a-vis the Nazism. He was favorable to the bringing together of the partisans of Jouhaux with the old unit ones. But the Hitler pact - Stalin of the summer 1939 made indignant it as much as the Accords of Munich of September 1938 between Hitler and the western powers.

the resistant trade unionist

Extremely logically it engaged in trade-union Resistance, delivering articles to working Résistance and Libération (newspaper, 1941-1964). At this point in time it gave an article for this newspaper to a correspondent, whom it was stopped in May 1944. Off-set in Buchenwald, he would die in a commando of this camp

sources

biographical Dictionary of the labor movement French , note written by Hammered Jean-Louis, volume 42,1992.

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