The Main-d'œuvre immigrée was a French trade unionist organisation, composed of immigrant workers of the ''

Confédération générale du travail unitaire The Confédération générale du travail unitaire, or CGTU ( en, United General Confederation of Labor), was a trade union confederation in France that at first included anarcho-syndicalists and soon became aligned with the French Communist Par ...

'' (CGTU) in the 1920s. The MOI was affiliated to the

Profintern The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...

. The MOI was initially named ''Main d'œuvre étrangère'', but 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 Unit ...

, who in practice were in charge, changed the name from ''étrangère'' (foreign) to ''immigrée'' (immigrant) due to perceived xenophobia during the 1930s. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Louis Grojnowski Louis may refer to: * Louis (coin) * Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name * Louis (surname) * Louis (singer), Serbian singer * HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy See also Derived or associated terms * Lewis ( ...

(called "Brunot") and Simon Cukier aka Alfred Grant took charge, and the organisation gave rise to an armed squad, the

FTP-MOI The Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI) were a sub-group of the ''Francs-tireurs et partisans'' (FTP) organization, a component of the French Resistance. A wing composed mostly of foreigners, the MOI maintained an arm ...

, directed by

Joseph Epstein Joseph Epstein (October 16, 1911 – April 11, 1944), also known as Colonel Gilles and as Joseph Andrej, was a Polish-born Jewish communist activist and a French Resistance leader during World War II. He was executed by the Germans. Communi ...

. After the

mass arrest A mass arrest occurs when police apprehend large numbers of suspects at once. This sometimes occurs at protests. Some mass arrests are also used in an effort to combat gang activity. This is sometimes controversial, and lawsuits sometimes result. ...

of more than 13,000 Jews in the

Vel' d'Hiv Roundup The Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup ( ; from french: Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv', an abbreviation of ) was a mass arrest of foreign Jewish families by French police and gendarmes at the behest of the German authorities, that took place in Paris on 16 and 17 July ...

in July 1942, the groups became somewhat more active. Pursued relentlessly by the

Special Brigades During the Second World War, the Special Brigades (french: Brigades spéciales, or BS) were a French police force in Vichy France specializing in tracking down "internal enemies" (i.e. French Resistance workers), dissidents, escaped prisoners, Jew ...

of the Renseignements généraux, almost all the MOI fighters had been identified by the end of summer 1943. In the autumn the French police arrested them all, and nothing remained of the FTP-MOI. The most famous of the FTP-MOI's members was

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. H ...

, and the FTP-MOI is widely known from the

Affiche rouge The ''Affiche Rouge'' (Red Poster) is a notorious propaganda poster, distributed by Vichy France and German authorities in the spring of 1944 in occupied Paris, to discredit 23 immigrant French Resistance fighters, members of the Manouchian Gro ...

, a German propaganda poster displaying the members of the FTP-MOI after their arrest at the end of 1943, whose aim was to stigmatise the presence of foreigners and

Jew 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""Th ...

s among 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 ...

; a

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

Louis Aragon Louis Aragon (, , 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littérature''. He wa ...

, set to music and sung by

Léo Ferré Léo Ferré (24 August 1916 – 14 July 1993) was a French-born Monégasque poet and composer, and a dynamic and controversial live performer, whose career in France dominated the years after the Second World War until his death. He released s ...

, deals with this story. In Belgium too there was a ''Main-d'œuvre immigrée'' organization, which took part in the

Belgian Resistance The Belgian Resistance (french: Résistance belge, nl, Belgisch verzet) collectively refers to the resistance movements opposed to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Within Be ...

in the ranks of the ''

Front de l'Indépendance The Independent Front (french: Front de l'Indépendance or FI; nl, Onafhankelijkheidsfront, OF) was a left-wing faction of the Belgian Resistance in German-occupied Belgium in World War II. It was founded in March 1941 by Dr Albert Marteaux ...

'' under the leadership of the Bulgarian

Todor Angelov Todor Angelov Dzekov ( bg, Тодор Ангелов Дзеков, rendered in French as ''Théodore Angheloff''; 12 January 1900 – 30 November 1943) was a Bulgarian anarcho-communist activist who lived in exile in Belgium for much of his adul ...

and the Italian-Belgian

Jacques Grippa Jacques Grippa (Grivegnée, 30 March 1913– Forest, August 30, 1990) was a Belgian politician, member of the resistance during World War II and communist. Biography Grippa was the son of the Italian immigrant Jean Grippa (1886-1945) and the B ...

, while others were also active in ''Solidarité juive'' or in the ''

Comité de Défense des Juifs The Committee for the Defence of Jews (french: Comité de Défense des Juifs, or CDJ; nl, Joods Verdedigingscomiteit, JVD) was a group within the Belgian Resistance, affiliated to the Front de l'Indépendance, founded by the Jewish Communist Her ...

'', led by Hertz Jospa and Have Groisman.

References

Trade unions in France Profintern Trade unions established in the 1920s {{france-hist-stub