Pierre Kaan was a professor of philosophy, Marxist essayist, and prominent member of the French Resistance during World War II.
12 Facts About Pierre Kaan
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Pierre Kaan was born on 10 January 1903 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.
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In 1925 Pierre Kaan began an editorial collaboration with Albert Cohen at the Revue Juive, a literary magazine founded by Cohen to review Jewish literature.
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However, Pierre Kaan resigned from his position in September 1929 in order to fulfill his military obligations, which he completes in November and is thereby named professor in another secondary school, this time in Nogent-le-Rotrou.
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At odds over the party's close relationship with the Soviet Union, Pierre Kaan quit the French Communist Party in 1929 and joined Souvarine's new group, the Cercle Communiste Democratique, whose members included Simone Weil, Georges Bataille, and Raymond Queneau.
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In 1931 Pierre Kaan began his involvement with Boris Souvarine's La Critique Sociale joining Bataille, Weil, Queneau, Lucien Laurat and other writers, philosophers and economists to revue letters and ideas for what would become a widely read publication during the 1930s.
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Pierre Kaan thereby tasked himself of uniting and regrouping all those who shared the will to continue fighting against the Nazis.
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Alongside former comrades and old friends, Pierre Kaan participated in the founding of the group Liberation-Sud.
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In February 1942, Pierre Kaan enlisted in the Forces Francaises Combattantes, handing his engagement personally to Jean Moulin and Leo Morandat when they arrived to visit him at his home in Montlucon.
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From Buchenwald, Pierre Kaan was deported to Gleina, liberated by Czech anti-fascist fighters, and died a few days later, exhausted and stricken by Typhus and Tuberculosis in Ceske Budejovice hospital on 18 May 1945.
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In recognition of the operations Pierre Kaan led and undertook during the war, Kaan received three French and one British decoration.
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On 12 May 1948, the official journal of the French Government announced that Pierre Kaan had been posthumously decorated with Knight of the Legion of Honour, Medal of the Resistance with Rosette, War Cross with silver palm.