32 Facts About Boris Holban

Boris Holban was a Russian-born Franco-Romanian communist known for his role in the French Resistance as the leader of FTP-MOI group in Paris and for l'Affaire Manouchian controversy of the 1980s.

Boris Holban later escaped from a POW camp in Metz in December 1940.

Boris Holban's escape was assisted by a nun, Sister Helene Studler.

Boris Holban welcomed Operation Barbarossa as it allowed him to undertake undercover work against Nazi Germany.

The FTP-MOI became an elite group within the FTP that was always assigned the most dangerous missions, which Boris Holban regarded as an honor.

In July 1943, Boris Holban was replaced as the leader of the FTP-MOI by the Armenian Communist Missak Manouchian as he believed that the organisation needed to slow down the pace of attacks to focus more on organisating itself as the police pressure was growing more intense by the day, which were contrary to the party's orders for more and more attacks.

Bowd that regardless of who was telling the truth that it seems that Boris Holban had some sort of dispute with the FTP leadership.

Boris Holban was not on the best of terms with either Manouchian or the political commissar of the FTP-MOI, Joseph Davidowicz, who had named Manouchian as Hoban's successor as he felt that Manouchian was more aggressive.

Boris Holban had planned the assassination, through he was no longer the FTP-MOI commander by the time it occurred.

Boris Holban left Paris to lead a marquis band in the forests of the Ardennes made up of young Frenchmen escaping service with the STO and escaped Soviet POWs.

Boris Holban assigned Luca Boico to lead the investigation into who betrayed the groupe Manouchian, which led them to the political commissar, Joseph Davidowicz, whom it was discovered had cracked under torture after being arrested by Brigade speciale 2 in October 1943.

In 1946, Boris Holban returned to Romania, where he became first a colonel and then a general in the Romanian Army under the Communist regime.

Boris Holban's rise up the ranks was rapid as the Communist regime deeply distrusted officers who had served in the Royal Romanian Army, and he was appointed Director of Cadres in charge of the political indoctrination of young officers.

Boris Holban admitted that he was promoted for political reasons, writing:.

Boris Holban attempted to publish a book in Bucharest about the role of Romanian Communists in the French Resistance, but was unable to do so.

The Securitate file on Boris Holban stated he was unsatisfactory from the party's viewpoint, maintaining that he was too fond of luxury and hunting and preferred the company of Romanian Army officers who were not party members, leading to him to being ousted after less than six months as a general.

Boris Holban made the mistake of talking at length to a group of Romanian-American Communists from Detroit who were visiting Bucharest in early 1950, which led to the accusation that he was an American spy.

Boris Holban's chapter was very selective in its treatment of the facts with the groupe Manouchian being portrayed as betrayed by an unnamed provocateur and it was wrongly stated that it was the Gestapo that arrested the groupe Manouchian instead of the French police.

Boris Holban claimed that Holban not only refused Manouchian's request to leave Paris, but threatened to have him executed as a deserter if he should leave without permission.

Bowles noted in the film that everything Boris Holban says "smacks of duplicity".

When Boris Holban was interviewed by a journalist from the Communist newspaper, L'Humanite, Jean-Pierre Ravery, about the film, Boris Holban stated:.

Boris Holban asks me in a friendly, but emphatic manner, to speak out publicly against the programming of the film and thus to accompany other "protests".

L'Affaire Manouchian prompted much controversy at the time, all the more as the PCF disawoved Boris Holban and put the blame for the arrest of groupe Monouchian on him, inspiring Boris Holban to start writing his memoirs in response to defend his reputation.

Adler is the son of German Jewish Holocaust survivors and felt a strong kinship with Boris Holban, who like him was an "outsider" in France.

Boris Holban is not coming out of retirement today because he is seriously questioned: Melinee Manouchian accuses him of having indirectly caused the death of her husband and his comrades, by sending them the order to remain on site in Paris when they knew they were threatened with imminent arrest.

Boris Holban finds them essentially, and rightly so, too costly in men, too adventurous.

Boris Holban is then relieved of his duties by his officials and removed from the action.

Boris Holban's version was supported by an article published by his intelligence chief Cristina Luca Boico in the January 1980 edition of the Romanian journal Magazin istoric, where she mentions that Boris Holban was in the Ardennes in November 1943 and had not been in Paris since September 1943.

When Boico defected to France in 1987, she confirmed the account, saying that Boris Holban had not been in contact with Manouchian or any members of his group for some time when they were arrested.

In 1989, Boris Holban published his memoirs Testement in Paris, which was critical of many of the decisions taken by the French Communist leaders during the war while seeking to rebut allegations of being a Gestapo informer.

In 1989, the book Le Sang de l'etranger by Stephane Courtois, Adam Rayski and Denis Peschanski cleared Boris Holban of the allegations made by Boucault that he was a Gestapo informer.

Bowd wrote that the allegations that Boris Holban was the informer were "discredited" by the opening of the French police records in the 1990s, which revealed that Davidowicz was the one who betrayed Manouchian, just as Boris Holban had been maintaining all the long.