Henri to Yvette

650 Gen Tpt Coy
Italy

2 May 1944    ## NB Jewish communist line###

“Yesterday was May Day. The workers’ holiday, lily of the valley appeared and they sell it on the street corners in Paris. There’s a strike and one feels it in the city. Then there are demonstrations and sometimes a fight. Do you remember darling? But yes, you remember. And I ask myself as I think about it, what if a bad fairy made me describe to you my memories of all the May Days, of my May Days? It tempts me, but I won’t do it; I have enough good sense to save my twaddle. However I want this to be your May Day letter. Then I must simply tell you this: for the first time, after more than 20 years of fascist dictatorship, Italy, working class Italy has celebrated its holiday. And those little improvised red flags made from bits of cloth that I saw on the humble little houses and the badly fashioned talks that I heard on street corners, and the waking from a long sleep that I saw on the hardened faces of the old workers, and the astonishment that I read on the faces of the young – all that, darling, moved me more than any other May day. Everyone here is distressed, all classes, but the working class will find itself again. I can see it. I can feel it……..There was a little celebration-meeting here in the Camp; all those for whom May Day signifies something came. And I had to open the celebration. This is what I said: “For me May day has never been only a celebration, symbolising the rich working class tradition in the heroic struggle for the liberation of mankind from the capitalist yoke. May Day is itself a day of struggle. And now in 1944 that is even truer than before. This year, the working class in the whole world expresses its firm resolve by redoubling its efforts to finish with the Nazi pest, to accelerate the victory of the civilised world over the world of barbarity. In saying that, our hearts and thoughts go out to those thousands of anonymous comrades who, in that immense prison which is Nazi Europe, in town, country, mine, barracks, today give all their power, thoughts and hearts to the same cause as us, to our common cause: to beat bloody fascism.

We here are soldiers, but soldiers who have not for a minute forgotten their attachment to the working class. And as such we are conscious of the duty that our class has put on us, we are conscious of our interest in this war. And more! We are Jewish soldiers. And as such we know what our people expect of us.  That is why, on this May Day we can do no better than reaffirm our firm decision not to spare any effort in this war, to hasten its victorious end and also to liberate the people, our people, who groan and struggle in Hitler’s sadistic ghettos.

Because – and it cannot be said too often- the most vital interest of the Jewish people is the same as that of the working class of the world. The most vital interest of the Jewish people is identified absolutely with the interest of all people under the Nazi yoke.

And what is this vital interest in our time, comrades?  It is to hasten the end of this war, to accelerate the victory, which will restore to people their dignity, their liberty, and their place in the sun, which shines for everyone. To accelerate victory so as to save those of our martyred people who have managed to escape the most bestial massacres humanity has known, and to give them the possibility of collaborating in the construction of the new peace, of the new world.

That is why our slogan on this May Day 1944 can only be “Second Front, Now!”

We said “new peace”. Yes. Peace, the peace we are fighting for, that peace for which the world’s working class finds itself in the front ranks of the fighting forces, that peace for which the Army of the victorious proletariat – the glorious Red Army- attacks with powerful blows the Nazi fortress- blows whose echoes rejoice and fill with hope all the peoples – and our people – that peace can only be constructed on the basis of independence, of love and respect among all peoples.

The conclusion of this war by this new peace is a certainty, comrades. For the whole world. It is a certainty – and we say it with an unequalled revolutionary pride! – thanks to the marvellous spirit of the glorious 8^th Army which chased fascism from a continent, thanks to the Socialist state, to the power of the fraternal union of the soviet peoples who across 27 years, despite boycott, blackmail, intervention and the most hideous lying propaganda on the part of the black reaction of the world, have known how to galvanise their strength whose most noble, beautiful, humane expression is the Army of hundreds of peoples of dozens of races- the glorious invincible Red Army!

Nazism – that horrible menace in the shape of the triumph of the basest instinct-which weighed heavily on humanity, is no more. Our victory is certain. The problem is when. No! The problem is not when! The problem is to strike now, immediately, the mortally wounded beast on Soviet land. Straight away, without delay……

Why hesitate? It is the result of the fear of the ultra reactionary bourgeoisie. Fear of tomorrow’s Europe. Fear of that peace of which the content can escape him and belong to the peoples. For they know that what they had, they will no longer have. For them the future is a tragic question mark (as it is for the zionists..)  But for us, comrades, no.  They have something to lose (and we will do our best to see that their apprehension is transformed into joyous reality!)  The working class has nothing to fear from the future, after the defeat of fascism. It has nothing to lose and everything to win.

Is it the same thing for the Jewish people?

Is there an another people in the world whose immediate national interest mixes so well with the interest of the working class?  And since the future of the Jewish people, even its existence, depends on the socialist future of the world, it is the whole people which must today cry with us- Long Live Socialism! Long Live May Day! National celebration of all free peoples!

That’s what I said, darling.

And I want to add this: There are some intellectuals who talk about history repeating itself. A propos of the red flags that you could see yesterday in the Italian streets. They say, yes it all has happened before. Yes, but this time now, is after fascism and then it was before fascism. It’s not a repetition. That’s the important thing. It is history on the march. Quite simply.

Henri

A few words on the ground.

I didn’t tell you in this letter that I love you……