Jules Chazanoff

Jules Chazanoff, known as “Chazoff” was, in 1912, the secretary of the Parisian group La Jeunesse anarchiste to which Mualadés, Dremière, Boyer, Carré, Morin and many others belonged among others. Before 1914, he belonged to the Foyer populaire de Belleville, the "Friends of the Libertaire" and remained then 25 rue de Ménilmontant (20th). In 1914, he was a member of La Jeunesse libertaire who met 1 boulevard Magenta and whose officials were Barbier (secretary) and Escande (treasurer).

Although exempt from military service, a position in which he had been maintained in December 1914, probably fearing to be mobilized during the war, he had taken refuge in London where he was in the spring of 1916.

After the war, he again frequented the libertarian circles. In the spring of 1923, he made a lecture tour on the theme “What I Saw in Russia”.

He intervened – he was a good speaker – at the 4th Congress of the Anarchist Union which stood in Paris, 12-13 August 1923, and was elected “replacement” collaborator in the newspaper Le Libertaire quotidien. He was also elected provisional secretary of the association of “Friends of the created during an extraordinary congress on February 24, 1924 to save the newspaper financially threatened. He participated in the Congress of the Anarchist Union held in Paris, 1-3 November 1924 and where he advocated a solid organization with card and contribution. In the same year, Chazanoff collaborated in the daily series of the Libertaire and replaced Bastien at the secretariat of the newspaper from 4 July 1925. In June 1925, he was continued with Louvet following an article denouncing Primo de Rivera, the repression and execution of three companions following the attempt to insurrection at Vera de la Bidassoa. In the name of the “scoundrel laws”, he was sentenced, like Louvet, to 6 months in prison and 200 frans in fine.

He was in turn replaced in these functions at the Libertarian by L. Mualdès from November 6, 1925. He was also at that time one of the editors of the Bulletin of the Committee for the Defense of Revolutionaries imprisoned in Russia, of which he was the secretary. In 1924, on his return from a trip to Russia, he published the book The Bolshevist Lie.

In early May 1925, he replaced Peyroux at the AU Secretariat. In September he participated in an advisory assembly organized in Bezons, in preparation for the next AU congress, and in which Laccord, Le Meillour, Odéon, Loreal, S. Faure, Peyroux, etc.) During a session interrupt, the resenting companions had organized a demonstration at the Bezons market against the gerr of Morocco where Chazoff had spoken (cf. The Libertarian, September 11, 1925)

On 8 January 1926, accused of having sent in 1922 to Béthune leaflets and pamphlets in favor of Cottin, he had been prosecuted before the court of Douai and had been sentenced in default to 18 months in prison while Bridoux and his companion Henriette Engrand, prosecuted for the dissemination of these brochures, were respectively sentenced to 4 months and 1 month suspended prison.

In 1926, he undertook a propaganda tour and was sentenced with the companion Laxroix by the Criminal Court of Orleans to eight months in prison for provoking military personnel to disobedience following the poster published by the UAC and entitled Down the war! (cf. The Libertarian, March 26, 1926). For having asked and obtained help from the International Red Relief and having thanked the latter by a letter published by L’Humanité of 6 June 1926, Chazanoff was blamed as well as Lacroix by a congress, held on the same day, of the Paris Federation which dissolated from these two comrades; the motion of blame presented by Laccord was voted by seven votes to three and two abstentions. (The Libertarian, June 11, 1926).

It was probably around this time that during a series of conferences in the Gard, he appreciated the region and bought a second home in Aimargues, rue Baroncelli, which will be used by the local group to hold meetings.

At the Congress of Orleans, 12-14 July 1926, which gave birth to the Communist Anarchist Union, Chazanoff, on the proposal of Lecoin, was unanimously readmitted to the congress but without being able to occupy any post in the Anarchist Union, nor speak on its behalf (Le Libertaire, July 17, 1926). In turn, the Communist Anarchist Federation of the Paris region, meeting on 14 November 1926 in the presence of Chazanoff who had been released in November, after regretting the attitude of the latter, reported the measure of exclusion taken against him and asked “all the comrades to consider Chazoff as one of our own and to put a definitive point to the Chazoff affair” (Le Libertaire, November 19, 1926). Again arrested on 30 November 1926 to serve an eight-month prison sentence, incurred for defending Cottin, the perpetrator of the attack on Clemenceau, in 1922 (Le Libertaire, 10 December 1926), he was interned at the Health where at the beginning of May 1927, he launched a hunger strike with Jean Bucco, Achile Lausille and Jean Girardin, all held in detention in the name of “coercion by body”. He was transferred to Cochin Hospital after ten days of hunger strike (Le Libertaire, June 3, 1927) before receiving a pardon on May 3 and being released from prison.

He then acted as interim of the secretariat for the drafting of the Libertaire, then he was again indicted (Le Libertaire, 28 October 1927) for two articles (“Responsible” and “Sus aux assassins”) published in July 1927.

After the Congress of Paris, 30 October-1 November 1927, which was a congress of split and saw the creation of the Revolutionary Communist Anarchist Union. Chazanoff was, with Le Meillour, head of the Western Regional Federation of the new organization and then secretary, with S. Férandel, from this organization that he was to leave in 1928, which was recorded at the Congress of the Union, in Amiens, 12-15 August 1928 (Le Libertaire, 31 August 1928).

In April 1928, he was an abstentionist candidate in the 3rd arrondissement in the legislative elections.

Until the exodus of 1940, Chazanoff became a corrector in 1933, worked for the newspaper Le Jour. He participated on 10-11 August 1935 in the National Conference of Saint-Denis against the Laval-Stalin Declaration and intervened on August 11 in the debates.

In the 1930s, he resided 288 Grande-Rue in Maison-Alfort and was on the list of checks of the homes of anarchists (1935).

In September 1936 he had an interview with L. Jouhaux and was approached to ensure the liaison between the CGT and the CNT. He had to leave for Spain for this purpose, but, according to a police report, some Spanish anarchist activists having expressed reservations about the sincerity of his opinions, it was finally Louis Anderson “Ander” who was chosen. It was on the same date that Louis Lecoin entrusted him and Lucien Haussard with the mission to find weapons and ammunition on behalf of the Anti-Fascist Militia Supply Committee and the CNT. In order to be able to carry out this task, Chazanoff would have been replaced provisionally by the newspaper Le Jour, the Free Spain Committee then paying him his salary as a corrector. The former anarchist Salvator Schiff provided him with an office at 15 rue de Lapérouse for his activities, which he continued until 1939

In January-February 1939, he was with L. Haussard one of the special envoys of the International Anti-Fascist Solidarity (AIS) on the Pyrenean border to assist Spanish refugees during the Retirada. In an article entitled Visions of Horror and Frigrance, both wrote: “... A few kilomers of Port-Bou a caravan of miserable pursues its unspeakable ordeal. Suddenly two men, disabled old men, regain an unsuspected energy to rush into the meadow lining the road. They have just seen, already decaying, the body of a cow and that of a mule. They too died of hunger, no doubt; but how could they stay there so long without being completely devoured by vermin? No matter, after all. The knives came out of the pockets and were cut in the flesh in putrefaction. Soon there will remain only two skeletons and the caravan will resume the road, at slow steps, painfully...” (cf. SIA, No. 13, February 9, 1939). On 7 February, in Paris, he intervened at the Presidency of the Council to obtain the release of Haussard who had just been arrested in Perpignan under the indictment of “fraudulent introduction of foreigners in France”, then left for Perpignan accompanied by Master Henry Torrés in charge of ensuring the defense of Haussard. After a visit to the camp of Argelès where he had come to bring a truck of food, Chazoff described the barrack that served as a hospital: “... It is on the sea, of course, half a kilometer from the central camp... A hospital? If you can say. A barracks Adrian, insufficient to contain the 500 wounded, large and small, men, women and children, mixed together without concern for sex, age, but associated in a pain and a collective suffering, in a unique misery. There, lying on a benchtop, a child of a dozen years, with a wax face, already seems plunged into eternity. Only the eyes have a strange glow. He is mutilated with both legs, the Spanish military doctor who took charge of the hospital could still be saved if the most indispensable pharmaceuticals do not fail. – I lack, he said to myself absolutely everything. I have no gauze or bandage strips, I have no alcohol, not a drop of iodine... I was seized at customs, for what reason I wonder, my complete kit and I now miss the elementary scalpel necessary to the most insignificant of operations... Every day on the five hundred hospitalized, I have a dozen dead... Ah, these poor faces, these poor faces, these faces SIA, No. 14, 16 February 1939).

Back in Paris he participated in the Union Center for Action against the War and wanted that, despite the situation, weapons continued to be sent to the Spanish Republic, which provoked a lively dispute with the June director who considered that the Negrin government did not deserve support from them. This dispute caused some turmoil in the ranks of the SIA and the AU and the Trade Union Center for Action against the War decided not to communicate either in Le Libertaire nor in SIA. In the early summer of 1939, Chazanoff, like other AU activists including Louis Anderson, stopped collaborating with the SIA newspaper, insinuating that significant resources for Spanish refugees would have been diverted from their true assignment and would have served Lecoin to publish the SIA newspaper. Chazanoff, against whom Lecoin multiplied the insinuations on his needs for money, claimed, according to a police report, to be “ready to reveal the resources of SIA and to ask how with 400 francs per week (rate of all the appointees of SIA) Lecoin had been able to be built a pavilion of 120,000 francs.”

In September 1939, the police reported that he had left his job as a proofreader at the newspaper Le Jour and that he was staying with his wife in Villeparisis with the linotypist Desmarest.

Admitted to the correctional union on September 10, 1933, Chazanoff, who had been played as a Freemason by the Vichy police, played an important role during the Second World War by reorganizing the union in the free zone in the Lyon region. He centralized the contributions of the correctors in the southern zone, and thus allowed the union to resume part of its activity at a time when the exodus had dispersed a large number of correctors. During the Occupation, he was first arrested by the Germans: he had been denounced as “communist” by the contractor of the work of the construction site on which he had been placed by the union of electricians and where he defended the interests of the workers. He was interned at the Tourelles barracks from 2 July to 16 October 1941; during his detention, he was taken to Tenon Hospital to undergo the removal of the stomach. He was then released to “go to die at home” according to the words of the German major who treated the sick. He then worked at the social restaurants on rue Pierre Lescot in Les Halles. Arrested a second time on November 18, 1943, after being denounced as a “Jew” by an employee of community restaurants, he was interned at the Drancy camp in January 1944 and liberated when Allied troops arrived on 18 August 1944. Having become tuberculosis, he could not work. Until his death on September 19, 1946, he remained an anarchist. His political internee card was issued to his wife on October 16, 1957 under No. 1301 11403 by the Ministry of Veterans and Victims of War.

WORK :

Many collaborations (the dates given are not limiting) to the Libertian, to the People in 1935, to the Human Fatherland in 1936, to CQFD, 1944-1949.

Books :

The Bolshevik Lie, 1924 (La Librairie sociale, 1924, 107 p.).
The CGT Soviet colony, 1939, 125 p., the Editions de France, owned by De Carbuccia de Gringoire, which earned Chazoff the criticisms of the Proletarian Revolution, criticisms to which the accused responded in the no. of February 10, 1939.
People, these are your traitors, 1940, 98 p.
Collaboration at the Anarchist Encyclopedia of Sébastien Faure.