Neus Català obituary

Fighter against fascism in Spain, France and Germany

Neus Català, who has died aged 103, was a lifelong fighter against fascism. A communist who had escaped over the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war, then joined the French resistance, she was eventually captured and sent to Ravensbrück, the Nazi death camp for women in northern Germany. She was then moved to the Flossenbürg camp, where she was set to work in the Holleschein munitions factory. Català was one of a group of women who sabotaged the bombs and shells being manufactured, by spitting in gunpowder or spilling oil in the machinery.

Her memories of the extermination camp, she said, were always in black and white, never in colour. She survived because of her determination and because “there was great solidarity among the women”. Català was critically ill when the camp was liberated in April 1945 (“We were just skulls with eyes”), but she recovered to continue her fight against fascism.

Continue reading...

Trotsky to be expelled from France – archive, 18 April 1934

18 April 1934: “Trotsky had not kept his promise to remain neutral when he was granted the hospitality of France,” said the French minister of the Interior

Paris, April, 17.
The French Government, at its meeting to-day, decided to expel Trotsky from France. Commenting on this decision, M. Sarraut, the Minister of the Interior, said that “Trotsky had not kept his promise to remain neutral when he was granted the hospitality of France.” Trotsky, M. Sarraut said, would be asked to leave France (and, in the first place, the Paris district) within the shortest possible time.

Related: From the archive: The expulsion of Trotsky from the Soviet party

Continue reading...

Millions of Chinese youth ‘volunteers’ to be sent to villages in echo of Mao policy

Communist Youth League students to ‘spread civilisation’ in countryside and ‘promote technology’

China is planning to send millions of youth “volunteers” back to villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago.

The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to “rural zones” by 2022 in order to “increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science and technology”, according to a Communist party document.

Continue reading...

‘Ma’amageddon’: secret plans for Queen’s nuclear address revealed

National Archives’ cold war exhibition shows planned scenarios such as arrest of Michael Foot

In the apocalyptic event of a nuclear strike on Britain, the government offered householders make-do-and-mend advice on how to create refuge shelters under stairs and tables, and knock up temporary toilets from a chair and bucket.

Few were reassured by the DIY defences advocated in the widely lampooned public information “Protect and Survive” pamphlet, published in 1980, and a new cold war exhibition at the National Archives in Kew, featuring such a shelter, will do little to augment faith in this as a robust strategy for civilian survival.

Continue reading...

Donald Tusk: Passionate politician forged in Poland’s fight against communism

The president of the European council caused a tabloid feeding frenzy with his ‘special place in hell’ remark but what makes him tick?

Donald Tusk has it in him to be a bit of a hooligan. His younger self, he admits, would “roam the streets cruising for a bruising” to break the monotony of communist life in his home-town of Gdańsk, the port city on Poland’s Baltic coast.

Contrary to the image of the typical bloodless Brussels Eurocrat, the president of the European council, who stands alongside Jean-Claude Juncker as the most senior of EU figures, is a man of passion with a feel for who is on the right side of history. Last week it was frustration, not boredom, that brought out the inner wrecking ball.

Continue reading...