Maurice Rajsfus

Maurice Rajsfus
Maurice Rajsfus in 2005
Born	9 April 1928 Aubervilliers, 93, France
Occupation	Historian Journalist & Controversialist Writer

Maurice Rajsfus (born 9 April 1928) is a French writer, journalist, historian and anti-establishment militant. He is the author of numerous books which address themes such as the Jewish genocide in France, the police, and attacks on civil liberties.

In 1994 he co-founded the "Observatory of Public Liberties" ("l'Observatoire des libertés publiques"), which he leads.

Maurice Rajsfus was born in Aubervilliers on the north side of Paris. His parents were Polish Jews who had arrived in France in the early 1920s. Their marriage ceremony had been performed by the mayor of Aubervilliers, Pierre Laval, "still, back then, a pacifist lawyer".

A defining experience came in July 1942 when he was 14. In what came to be known as the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup more than 13,000 Jews were rounded up in and around Paris by French police and officials, to be held in appalling conditions in a velodrome before being shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Rajsfus, his elder sister Jenny and his parents were included in the exercise. At the last minute, however, French Jewish children aged between 14 and 16 were released. The children never saw their parents again. Many years later, in 1988, he approached Marcel Mulot, one of the two policemen who had come to the house and arrested them on that occasion, in order to try and "understand". But the policeman replied that he was not interested in the discussion requested. Since 1988 Rajsfus has repeatedly recalled that brief discussion in interviews and published work, referring to the "Vichy police whose past today remains very much with us, without remorse and without memory" ("...police de Vichy au passé trop présent, sans remords et sans mémoire...").

Directly after the war hew joined the Young Communists. However, two years later, in 1946 he was expelled for Hitlero-Trotskyism. He was active in the Fourth International before 1950, and then in the "Socialism or Barbarism" libertarian socialist group with Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis, mobilising the in opposition to the Algerian War after 1955.