KRASUCKI, HENRI

KRASUCKI, HENRI (1924–2003), French labor leader. Krasucki was born in a suburb of Warsaw to a family of textile workers who were members of the Communist Party. In 1926 the family settled in Paris, where Krasucki joined the Jewish Communist Youth movement at the age of 14. In 1940 he became a leader of this group in the underground and in 1941 also became a leader of a Resistance group made up of foreign Communist workers. In 1943 his father was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. He was arrested along with his mother and sent to Auschwitz; from there he was transferred to Buchenwald. After the Liberation he returned to France and started working in the Renault auto works, advancing at the same time within the Communist Party. In 1960 he became the publisher of La Vie Ouvrière, the weekly of the CGT, the Communist-affiliated trade union, and in 1961 he joined the latter's Bureau. In 1964 he   was elected to the Political Bureau of the Communist Party. Krasucki was secretary-general of the CGT between 1982 and 1992, in a period during which leftist governments had to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis for the working class. He wrote Syndicats et lutte de classe (1969), Syndicats et socialisme (1972), and Syndicats et unité (1980) (Gideon Kouts / René Sirat (2nd ed.)