Valentin Feldman (23 June 1909 – 27 July 1942) was a

French philosopher French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern ph ...

and

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

of Jewish-Russian origin. In 1942, he was murdered by the Nazis during the Occupation of France. Born in Saint Petersburg, he left the USSR in 1922 at the end of the Civil War. He settled in Paris and studied at the Lycée Henri IV and the Sorbonne University. A pupil of French philosopher Victor Basch, he worked on aesthetics and wrote an essay, ''L'Esthétique française contemporaine'' (''French contemporan aesthetic''), Félix Alcan, 1936. Involved in public activities as a teacher of philosophy, he supported as an antifascist the Front populaire and the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. He joined the French Communist Party in 1937. Among his friends were Jean-Paul Sartre,

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...

, Gaston Bachelard and

Georges Politzer Georges Politzer (; 3 May 190323 May 1942) was a French philosopher and Marxist theoretician of Hungarian Jewish origin, affectionately referred to by some as the "red-headed philosopher" (''philosophe roux''). He was a native of Oradea, a city ...

. In September 1939, he volunteered for the French Army despite suffering from a heart condition. Mobilized as a soldier in Rethel, he began to write his ''Journal de guerre'' in January 1940 in the middle of the Phoney War. He survived several air attacks and bombardments during the

Fall of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France during the Second World ...

(May–June 1940). Under the German Occupation he was a teacher in Dieppe but suffered from the first law on the status of Jews (October 1940). He was finally excluded from teaching in July 1941. By that time, he was already active in the French Resistance. From 1940, he was liaison officer between Dieppe,

Rouen Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the prefecture of the Regions of France, region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy and the Departments of France, department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one of ...

and Paris. After a year, he wrote the texts against the collaborationist Vichy regime and the Germans in the clandestine newspaper ''L'Avenir normand'' in Dieppe, and wrote several texts for the clandestine Parisian review ''

La Pensée libre LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...

'', supervised by

, Jacques Decour and Jacques Solomon. Becoming part of the underground, he joined a group of communist Resistance in Rouen, where he participated in actions against the German occupiers. Arrested in February 1942 after the sabotage of a factory, he was imprisoned and tortured. Judged in Paris, he was condemned to death by a German military tribunal. He refused to sign his appeal for a reprieve. Feldman was executed by a firing squad on 27 July 1942. Addressing the German soldiers just before the salvo, he called out to them: "Imbeciles, it is for you that I die! " His last words inspired numerous French writers: Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Aragon were among them.Jean-Paul Sartre, ''Cahiers pour une morale'', Gallimard, 1983, p. 212 ; Louis Aragon, ''L'Homme communiste'', Gallimard, 1946, p. 42. French-Swiss film-maker

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran� ...

dedicated a short film to him, ''The Last Word'' (1988). Essays : * ''L'Esthétique française contemporaine'', Paris, Félix Alcan, 1936. (fr.) * ''Journal de guerre. 1940-1941'', Tours, Farrago, 2006. (fr.) Translations (from Russian to French) : * I.K. Luppol, ''Diderot. Ses idées philosophiques'', Paris, Éditions sociales internationales, 1936. (fr.) * Nicolas Ostrovski, ''Et l’acier fut trempé...'', préface de Romain Rolland, Paris, Éditions sociales internationales, 1937. (fr.)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feldman, Valentin 20th-century French philosophers Executed philosophers Marxist theorists French people of Russian-Jewish descent Jewish philosophers Jewish socialists Philosophers of art French male writers 1909 births 1942 deaths Communist members of the French Resistance French Army personnel of World War II Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany People executed by Nazi Germany by firing squad