Henri Curiel is a figure who, despite having had in important historical influence on revolutionary movements, remains relatively unknown. When we talk about revolutions, political struggles, or resistance, we tend to imagine sudden and violent armed actions. But, while Henri Curiel dedicated his life completely to people’s struggles, he was not among the fighters who bore weapons. Henri Curiel was rather an organiser, a logistician, one of those who worked in the shadow to lead the people’s resistance to victory.
Henri Curiel was the architect of many victories, mostly for the causes of antifascist and democratic. During his life, he participated directly and indirectly in struggles against the Nazi occupation of Egypt, the Algerian war of liberation, the struggles against fascist powers in Spain and Portugal, and the resistance to apartheid in South Africa and against Pinochet’s government in Chili.
Henri Curiel was born in Egypt in 1914 into a landlord family. His father was a banker, large-scale landowner, and shareholder in many key industries in Egypt. As such, he had access to an advanced education and was greatly influenced, as was the rest of his family, by French culture and literature. Like many young people at that time, Henri saw France as the most advanced democracy. However, later in his youth he discovered the horror of the capitalist system while visiting the industrial plants and agricultural lands of his father with Rosette Aladjem, whom he would marry years later. This discovery, combined with the influence of his older brother Raoul, lead him to develop an interest in Marxism and to declare himself a communist.
Many of his family members were involved in these forms of political activism, among them communist activists, antifascist fighters, and even a KGB spy infiltrating British services. During World War Two, while the Jewish population of Egypt was leaving the country as Third Reich troops approached, Henri Curiel decided to stay in the city to organize the resistance against fascist troops. But he was unlucky and was arrested by Egyptian collaborators seeking to make a good impression on the German troops.
In prison he was so convincing and charismatic that his guards were changed every 24 hours to prevent them from being influenced by his communist ideas. The first important personality traits of the young Curiel, which would feed his revolutionary activism during his long life, can be seen here. Henri was conscious of what was happening around him and he wanted to be part of it even if it meant risking his social status, his freedom and his life. He showed charisma and sociability to connect deeply with the people around him, while the story of the prison guards shows the strength of his persuasion. The sympathy he inspired in his jailors became a weapon he could use against the hegemonic powers, and the head of the prison soon feared him.
He was imprisoned several times for his political commitment before 1950, when he was finally expelled from Egypt and deprived of his Egyptian nationality. Upon arrival in France he began a long period of self-reflection. Since he could no longer act by himself in his home country – with which he would remain linked until his death – he involved himself in other liberation movements while keeping an eye on what happened in Egypt (and sometimes he influenced things, as in 1986, when he transmitted plans of the British attack on Suez Canal).
But it is for his major role in the coordination of the well-known “suitcase carriers network” during the Algerian War of Liberation that Henri Curiel would write his name in history. He used his professional education as a banker to renew and develop the methods of transferring money to the FLN (National Liberation Front), a task fundamental to the potential success of the war effort in Algeria. He restructured the “suitcase carriers network” to make it more efficient and more helpful to the Algerian people and their armed resistance.
In France, he was sidelined by the PCF (French Communist Party) and placed under surveillance by the French intelligence service, who thought he was a KGB spy. In 1960, he was arrested and sentenced to prison by the French justice system. Like many revolutionaries, he used his time in prison to develop his skills and those of his comrades locked up with him. From this period emerged his determination to use his experience of years of struggle to facilitate the coordination of clandestine activity, the forging of identity papers, and the administrative organisation of funds to sustain armed struggles. All the skills he accumulated could be taught to other people, thus increasing the collective skills and capacity of the movements around him.
With some of his friends, who were slightly sceptical, he created a new organization totally dedicated to fomenting internationalism: “Solidarité” (Solidarity). With “Solidarité”, he and his comrades committed themselves to forming a worldwide network of activists undertaking clandestine work and developing the capacities of national liberation movements and antifascist struggles to defend themselves against repression. This activity was rapidly noticed by far-right activists, who took a very dim view of this Egyptian communist living in France supporting anti-apartheid partisans in South Africa. Threats against his activity and his life became more frequent, but they did not not prevent him from spreading “Solidarité” activities and continuing to build an uncompromising internationalism.
Henri Curiel’s courage in the face of constant threats of imprisonment or assassination is one of his character traits that we must stress. The sacrifice he showed to serve freedoms that bloomed thousands of kilometres away from his home is a strong example of internationalism. As with many influential revolutionaries, Henri Curiel’s life ended in tragic and unclear circumstances. We know that he was assassinated, and that there is the possibility it was ordered by the highest state officials. Mercenaries without ethics who sold their dignity to the powerful assassinated the internationalist Henri Curiel.
But the question remains: for who? Several far-right, racist, and colonialist groups claimed responsibility for the murder. Some more recent confessions have questioned the various official stories. What is certain is that his death was convenient for colonial France’s foreign policy. So was the code of silence which surrounded the investigations and the enforced forgetting process, which has only served to spur our interest in the life of this unique character.
As a revolutionary activist murdered on French soil, Henri Curiel’s life and death demonstrates the dynamics of the political warfare waged by hegemonic powers against political dissidents. Once again, we should be inspired by the lives of those who have walked this path before us and opened the roads of resistance and organisation. We should commemorate their lives and keep their memories alive. Through Henri Curiel, we can see the reality of struggle and resistance within Europe and the concrete ways through which internationalism can support struggles for decolonisation. He is an example of someone who struggled from the centre of capitalist modernity, and in so doing made his life an island of democratic modernity.
-Ernesto Toledo
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