Cristina Luca Boico (8 August 1916 – 16 April 2002) was a

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

n communist activist. After going into exile in France, she joined the

French Resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

and worked in the intelligence service. At the end of the war, she returned to Romania and worked as the director of the Ministry of Education and numerous other governmental posts, until she was purged in 1952. Working as an editor for the Scientific Publishing House she later taught at the

Politehnica University of Bucharest Politehnica University of Bucharest ( ro, Universitatea Politehnica din București) is a technical university in Bucharest, Romania. 200 years of activity have been celebrated lately, as the university was founded in 1818.Botoșani, Romania to Luisa (née Segal) and Isidor Marcusohn. Her family, which included an older sister, Hermina, belonged to the assimilated

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

middle-class. Both she and her sister were deeply attached to Romanian culture and literature. The

Kingdom of Romania The Kingdom of Romania ( ro, Regatul României) was a constitutional monarchy that existed in Romania from 13 March ( O.S.) / 25 March 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian ...

was a deeply Francophile country as Romanian intellectuals embraced the idea of modelling the newly independent kingdom after France, Romania's "big Latin sister". Marcushon and her sister grew up reading French literature. After completing her secondary education at Carmen Sylva High School in Botoșani, Marcusohn moved to

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

to undertake medical studies. She later recalled about the Carmen Sylva school: "It was the nom de plume of Romania’s first queen, Elisabeth, the wife of Carol I. The school had an excellent national reputation. Teachers were selected among the very best, the discipline was severe. But it was in this high school that I had my first direct encounters with anti-Semitism... At the school, our teachers would have never made discriminatory or offensive statements-regardless of what they may have thought privately-but some girls with that family background maintained a certain distance from us". As an young woman, she was greatly influenced by the writings of the Romanian socialist

Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (born Solomon Katz; 1855, village of Slavyanka near Yekaterinoslav (modern Dnipro), then in Imperial Russia – 1920, Bucharest) was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and j ...

. She joined the Students' Democratic Front, an organization aligned with the Romanian Communist Party and wrote articles for journals on the international anti-fascist movement. As a university student, she spent much at time at the Schuller, the dormitory set aside for Jewish students that was often attacked by anti-Semitic students. One student at the

University of Bucharest The University of Bucharest ( ro, Universitatea din București), commonly known after its abbreviation UB in Romania, is a public university founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princel ...

remembered that many students spent "their time and energy in the absence of university sports on Jew-baiting or actual Jew-beating". In common with many other Jewish intellectuals in Eastern Europe, she was attracted to Communism because it promised to dissolve nationalities, religions and ethnicities, thereby rendering the "Jewish Question" moot as she recalled: "Communism promised a better world for all and, thereby, the genuine liberation of the Jewish people, allowing for a complete flourishing of its potential. Communism was supposed to bring about a democratic solution to the question of nationalities. Hardly anyone can imagine what it meant for us, young high school girls and boys". The Schuller was the center of much intellectual debate and discussion with the Jewish students mostly divided between the Communists who argued that only Communism could end antisemitism in Romania vs. the Zionists who argued that Romanian Jews should all leave for Palestine to establish a Jewish state there under the grounds there was no future for Jews in Romania. In 1931, the ACSE (''Asociațiile Generale ale Studeților Evrei''-General Union of Jewish Students), which managed the Schuller, was taken over by members of the illegal

Union of Communist Youth , colorcode = red , logo = Symbol of Union of Communist Youth.svg , caption = Emblem , logo2 = , caption2 = , founded = 1922 , dissolved = 1989 , headquarters = Bucharest, Socialist Republic of Romania ...

, and thereafter, the Communist tendency at the Schuller tended to dominate at the expense of the Zionists. She was a friend of

Lucien Goldmann Lucien Goldmann (; 20 July 1913 – 8 October 1970) was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. A professor at the EHESS in Paris, he was a Marxist theorist. His wife was sociologist Annie Goldmann. Biography Goldmann w ...

and was influenced by his ideas. Like Goldmann, she favored staying in Romania and supported the Communists against the Zionists. Goldmann often took part in the debates at the Schuller, taking a Marxist line while also venturing into more esoteric topics such as the impact of the theories of Einstein and Freud for Marxism and the understanding of human sexuality. Goldmann's theories, which were regarded as eccentric, brought him into conflict with the Stalinist Union of Communist Youth, which accused him of

Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

. In 1937, after being expelled for her political activities, Marcusohn left Romania to continue her studies at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

. On 28 December 1937,

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

Carol II of Romania Carol II (4 April 1953) was King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his forced abdication on 6 September 1940. The eldest son of Ferdinand I, he became crown prince upon the death of his grand-uncle, King Carol I in 1914. He was the first of t ...

appointed

Octavian Goga Octavian Goga (; 1 April 1881 – 7 May 1938) was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator. Life and politics Goga was born in Rășinari, near Sibiu. Goga was an active member in the Romanian nationalisti ...

of the extreme right-wing

National Christian Party The National Christian Party ( ro, Partidul Național Creștin) was a radical-right authoritarian and strongly antisemitic political party in Romania active between 1935 and 1938. It was formed by a merger of Octavian Goga's National Agrarian Pa ...

as prime minister. During Goga's short period in office, he passed a flood of anti-Semitic laws, one of which was to strip Romanian Jews of their Romanian citizenship. At the approach of the Nazis, the university was closed and per a posted notice, she was allowed to graduate by taking her final tests at any university offering them. Marcusohn made her way to

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Pa ...

, where she completed her examinations and received her certificate in Natural Sciences in June 1940.

Career

Marcusohn began working in the marine biology laboratory of

Édouard Chatton Édouard Chatton (; 11 October 1883 – 23 April 1947) was a French biologist who first characterized the distinction between the prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular types. Chatton coined the terms and published them first in his 1937 paper ' ...

Banyuls-sur-Mer Banyuls-sur-Mer (; ) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It was first settled by Greeks starting in 400 BCE. Geography Location Banyuls-sur-Mer is located in the canton of La Côte Vermeille and in the ar ...

, but by September had decided to return to Paris. Once there, she contacted the Romanian affiliates of the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Un ...

and reconnected with the communist movement. Taking in mathematics students, she worked as a tutor and was eventually offered a post with to translate journal articles to French for researchers at the ''Caisse nationale de la recherche scientifique'', forerunner to the

French National Center for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

. She participated in the 1940 demonstrations to protest the arrest of

Paul Langevin Paul Langevin (; ; 23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the ''Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes'', an an ...

and was arrested but quickly released. The anti-Semitic laws threatened the Jewish community in France with destitution, and the burden of poverty fell especially hard on women, and the all more so on immigrant Jewish women. In France, there were two terms for Jews; namely the ''les Israélites'' to describe Jews who had embraced the French language and culture, which was a respectful and polite term, and ''les Juifs'' for those Jews who were seen as having failed to properly embrace the French language and culture, which had derogatory connotations. French Jews were usually described politely as ''Israélites'' while the more derogatory term ''les Juifs'' was reserved for Jewish immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe. The popular image in France at the time of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe was of a mass of illegal immigrants who lived in poverty, refused to assimilate and engaged in criminality; the fact that the number of Eastern European immigrants, and even more so of illegal immigrants was greatly exaggerated led to the perception that this was a major social problem. Marcusohn spoke fluent French, but as a stateless Jew from Romania, she was considered to be more of a ''Juif'' than an ''Israélite'' In 1941, Marcusohn joined the Organisation Spéciale—Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (OS-MOI), the armed group of the Immigrant Labor Force, using the name Monique as a disguise. She was recruited into underground work by Boris Holban. She lost her translating job in 1942 and went to work full time, spying for the FTP-MOI. From the summer of 1942 onward, it was widely understood within the French Jewish community that the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was not deportation to some vague utopian Jewish homeland in Eastern Europe as the Nazis were promising, but rather genocide, which gave a major impetus to Jewish resistance. Marchusohn recalled that once it was understood that the threat was now an existential one of extermination that many Jews embraced resistance as the issue was one of survival. In 1942 when the OS-MOI merged with two other groups to form the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans—Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI), Marcusohn changed her name again, to Cristina Luca, and became and intelligence officer in the resistance. As the intelligence chief, she selected targets for resistance attacks and collected as much information as possible about the targets. The intelligence branch of the FTP-MOI was a largely female-dominated section, which reflected the prevailing assumptions that women were better suited for intelligence work while men were better suited for action. With the knowledge of her professors, Luca funneled stolen chemicals from the biology laboratory at the Sorbonne to the partisans. Between January-June 1943, the FTP-MOI staged 93 actions in Paris. In the first six months of 1943, the FTP-MOI were responsible for 14 train derailments, 34 acts of arson or bombings of buildings, and 43 assassinations in Paris. The FTP-MOI was regarded as an elite group within the FTP that was always assigned the most dangerous missions, which was seen as an honor. She specialized in constructing Molotov cocktails, and as the intelligence chief of the FTP-MOI she played a key role in the investigation to find the informer who betrayed

Missak Manouchian Missak Manouchian (Western hy, Միսաք Մանուշեան; , 1 September 1906 – 21 February 1944) was a French-Armenian poet and communist activist. An Armenian genocide survivor, he moved to France from an orphanage in Lebanon in 1925. ...

and his group in November 1943. Ultimately, her investigation exposed as the informer as Joseph Davidowicz, the political commissar to the ''groupe Manouchian'', who was promptly killed. In 1944, she was assigned to combat duty for the entire north of France and participated in several partisan attacks. During the liberation of Paris between 19-25 August 1944, she took part in the revolt. Together with her fellow Romanian communists Holban, Gheorghe Vasilichi and Ion Marinescu, she led a group that seized the Romanian consulate and the Romanian tourist office in Paris, which was announced at the time as the first step towards the overthrow of the regime of the prime minister, Marshal Ion Antonescu. After the liberation, she joined the French Army as a lieutenant. At the end of the war, Luca returned to Romania in March 1945. Between 1945 and 1947, she worked in the Ministry of Information and then went to Belgrade,

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

, where she worked at the Romanian embassy as a press-attaché for a year. During her time in Belgrade, she was a friend of

Milovan Djilas Milovan Djilas (; , ; 12 June 1911 – 30 April 1995) was a Yugoslav communist politician, theorist and author. He was a key figure in the Partisan movement during World War II, as well as in the post-war government. A self-identified democrat ...

, who at the time served as the vice-president of Yugoslavia and was Marshal Tito's right-hand man. Because of the

Tito–Stalin Split The Tito–Stalin split or the Yugoslav–Soviet split was the culmination of a conflict between the political leaderships of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, under Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin, respectively, in the years following World W ...

, Luca was recalled to Romania and began working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in charge of the press department. In 1949, she married Mihail Boico (born Rosner), a military officer in command of troops on the border. Shortly after the marriage, Stalin began targeting veterans of the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

and those who had been involved in the French Resistance, placing both Boico and her husband, who was known as Bibi, under suspicion. Besides for having served in the French Resistance, Boico's unwillingness to denounce Tito and her friendship with Djilas placed her under suspicion as a "Titoist"; only her friendship with the Foreign Minister Anna Pauker kept her safe from the Securitate. Pauker's downfall removed her principle patron and protector from within the PCR. Boico was dismissed from her job in June, 1952 and Bibi was purged from his position in the Interior Ministry that same fall. Boico was assigned to a minor position in the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History. Disillusioned by the party, after 1956, Boico no longer participated in political activities, concentrating instead on her work in history and science. In the 1960s, she began working as the editor of the Scientific Publishing House and later taught courses on

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

at the

Politehnica University of Bucharest Politehnica University of Bucharest ( ro, Universitatea Politehnica din București) is a technical university in Bucharest, Romania. 200 years of activity have been celebrated lately, as the university was founded in 1818.Nicolae Ceaușescu Nicolae Ceaușescu ( , ; – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and dictator. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last Communist leader of Romania. He ...

. By the 1970s, she considered Ceausescu's regime to be "fascist" as she was disgusted by the anti-intellecualism of the Ceausescu regime. The American scholar Brett Bowles noted that the crucial role played by women in the Resistance has tended to be overlooked, giving the example of the 1985 French documentary ''Des terroristes à la retraite'' (''Terrorists in Retirement'') by Mosco Boucault about the FTP-MOI. Bowles noted that in the film, there was almost no mention of the women who served in the FTP-MOI and Boico, despite her key role as the FTP-MOI intelligence chief, was mentioned only once in passing. Buico was not interviewed for ''Des terroristes à la retraite''; indeed the only woman interviewed in the film was Mélinée Manouchian and the interviews with her the focus was mostly on being the wife of

instead of her role as a ''résistante''. In 1987, she left Romania to visit her children in Paris and chose not to return. She began publishing again in France and wrote such works as ''Les Hommes qui ont porté Ceaușescu au pouvoir'', which has been called by Vladimir Tismăneanu "the most comprehensive and illuminating analysis" of the rise of Ceaușescu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party. Her major concern in the last years of her life was writing about the Holocaust in Romania and to rebut the attempts, which had started under the Ceaușescu regime in the 1970s, to portray Antonescu as a well meaning, but misguided Romanian patriot who was opposed to the Holocaust. She often advised the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C about the subject. At the time of her death she was writing a memoir entitled ''Histoire d’une famille au XXème siècle Souvenirs et réflexions''.

Death and legacy

Boico died on 17 August 2002 in Paris. In 2009, the French novelist Didier Daeninckx published a novel ''Missak'', where Luca Boico is mentioned several times as the book's hero, the journalist Dragère, seeks in 1955 to find out who betrayed Manouchian. In 2014, a French miniseries, ''Résistance'', was released about the young people involved in the French Resistance during the war. One of the characters in the series was based on Boico's experiences and was played by Romanian actress Cristina Flutur.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Boico, Cristina Luca 1916 births 2002 deaths Female resistance members of World War II Jewish partisans Jews in the French resistance People from Botoșani Romanian communists Political activists Members of the Francs-tireurs et partisans FTP-MOI Romanian participants in the French Resistance Jewish women activists Communist members of the French Resistance 20th-century Romanian women writers Academic staff of the Politehnica University of Bucharest Romanian civil servants Romanian Jews Romanian defectors Romanian emigrants to France Jewish communists