Valentin Feldman

Valentin Feldman (23 June 1909 – 27 July 1942) was a French philosopher and Marxist of Jewish-Russian origin. In 1942, he was murdered by the Nazis during the Occupation of France.

Born in Saint-Petersburg, he left the USSR in 1922 at the end of the Civil War. He settled in Paris and studied at the Lycée Henri IV and the Sorbonne University. A pupil of French philosopher Victor Basch, he worked on aesthetics and wrote an essay, L'Esthétique française contemporaine (French contemporan aesthetic), Félix Alcan, 1936.

Involved in public activities as a teacher of philosophy, he supported as an antifascist the Front populaire and the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. He joined the French Communist Party in 1937. Among his friends were Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gaston Bachelard and Georges Politzer. In September 1939, he volunteered for the French Army despite suffering from a heart condition. Mobilized as a soldier in Rethel, he began to write his Journal de guerre in January 1940 in the middle of the Phoney War. He survived several air attacks and bombardments during the Fall of France (May–June 1940).

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