Thomas Elek

Thomas Elek was born in Budapest, Hungary on 7 December 1924 to a family of communist intellectuals. The Elek family (Thomas, his father Sandor, his sister Marthe and his mother Hélène, then pregnant with his brother, Bela) emigrated to France in 1930. They settled in Paris, where his mother, after various minor jobs, became a restaurateur in 1934.

Elek left the Lycée Louis-le-Grand at the age of 16, to become involved in the underground movement after Nazi German forces defeated France and occupied Paris. He joined a group of students at the Sorbonne who were linked to the Groupe du musée de l'Homme, wrote and distributed tracts, and stuck papillons (butterflies – flyers) to walls. In August 1942, sympathising with the Jeunesses Communistes (Communist Youth), he became involved with the FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs et partisans – Main-d'œuvre immigrée) and took up the armed struggle of resistance. His nom de guerre was KERPAL.

Shortly after, Elek was assigned a solo attack on the Rive Gauche German bookstore, in which he used a booby-trapped copy of Marx's Capital. In March 1943, along with the young Czech, Pavel Simo, he made a grenade attack on a restaurant reserved for German officers at Asnières. Simo was arrested, and executed on 22 May 1943 at the Stand de tir de Balard.

On 1 June 1943 in a spontaneous attack, Elek threw two grenades into a group of 70 Germans in front of the Jaurès metro station. He was promoted and named head of the group at the center of the 4th detachment of the FTP-MOI Paris region; they were known as des dérailleurs and commanded by Joseph Boczov.

Elek participated in several railway derailments, notably that of 28 July on the Paris-Château-Thierry line. This derailment is said to have caused the death of 600 German soldiers.[1]

In 1943 Elek was arrested with others of the Manouchian Group and tortured by the Vichy Brigades Spéciales. He was transferred to the Germans and detained in Fresnes Prison. All but the sole woman member of the Manouchian group were condemned to death in a show trial by military officers, and executed by firing squad three days later, 21 February 1944, at Mont Valérien. The woman was beheaded at another site.