Thomas Elek
Thomas Elek · Heroes of Israel
Fighter of the Manouchian Group in occupied Paris, shown on the Affiche Rouge as 'Elek, Hungarian Jew, 8 derailments'.
7 December 1924, Budapest, Hungary — 21 February 1944, Mont-Valérien, France
Paris, France
Thomas Elek is recognized among Israeli contributors to Heroes of Israel — Fighter of the Manouchian Group in occupied Paris, shown on the Affiche Rouge as 'Elek, Hungarian Jew, 8 derailments'.
Thomas Elek came to Paris from Budapest as a child of six. He left the Lycée Louis-le-Grand at sixteen to join the underground, first printing and posting tracts, then taking up arms with the FTP-MOI in 1942 under the name KERPAL. His first solo action was to blow up a German bookshop on the Left Bank with a booby-trapped copy of Marx's 'Capital'; he went on to grenade attacks and railway sabotage. Arrested with the group led by Missak Manouchian, he was shot at Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944, aged nineteen.
Vichy printed the twenty-three faces on the Affiche Rouge to make France recoil from them, labelling him 'Elek, Hungarian Jew, 8 derailments'; the poster became instead the best-known monument to foreign fighters who died for France.
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Elek
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Fighter of the Manouchian Group in occupied Paris, shown on the Affiche Rouge as 'Elek, Hungarian Jew, 8 derailments'.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Elek
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