Krasucki, born in Poland and raised in Belleville, joined the communist Resistance at seventeen and those groups of immigrants who waged the armed struggle in Paris. Arrested in 1943, deported to Auschwitz together with his mother, who died there, he survived the camp and then Buchenwald. A metalworker, he became General Secretary of the CGT in 1982, for ten difficult years.
The story
Born in 1924 at Wołomin, in Poland, into a Jewish Communist family that reached Paris when he was four, Henri Krasucki grew up in Belleville. At sixteen he went into the resistance of the Communist Youth, and soon joined the FTP-MOI, the immigrant partisan units that carried on the armed struggle in Paris.
Arrested in March 1943 by the French police and tortured for six weeks — at times in front of his mother, arrested with him —, he was deported to Auschwitz, then to Buchenwald. Both of them came back. His father Isaac, a garment-trade union man, had been rounded up two months earlier and gassed at Birkenau on the day he arrived.
A metalworker, he climbed every rung of the CGT and became its general secretary in 1982, a post he held for ten years, in the hardest decade French trade unionism had known. His hoarse voice and Paris accent made him a familiar figure to the French, including those who shared none of his ideas.
Retired in 1992, he gave his last years to jazz, his passion, and to the memory of the deportations. He died in 2003 and rests in Division 97.
On site, do not miss
The immediate proximity of the memorials to the dead of the camps, which give this grave its context.
Visitors' questions
Where is Henri Krasucki's grave?
In Division 97 of Père-Lachaise, in the Communist and trade-union plot backing onto the Communards' Wall. The monuments raised to the deportees of the Nazi camps — among them Auschwitz, where he was held at nineteen — stand in the same sector.
Léon Jouhaux, the CGTWas Henri Krasucki deported?
Yes. Arrested in March 1943 for resistance work in the FTP-MOI, the immigrant partisan units, he was tortured, then deported to Auschwitz with his mother, before being moved to Buchenwald. Both came home to France in 1945; his father had been gassed at Birkenau.
Guy MôquetHow long did Krasucki lead the CGT?
Ten years, from 1982 to 1992. A former metalworker who came to the CGT through the shop floor, Henri Krasucki took charge of the union just as French trade unionism entered its sharpest decline, and stepped down at sixty-eight.
Jacques DuclosWhat was Henri Krasucki's passion?
Jazz. Henri Krasucki was a recognised connoisseur of it, and gave much of his last years to it, alongside his work on the memory of the deportations. He died in 2003, at seventy-nine, and rests in Division 97.
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