David Kutner

David Kutner, born Aron Skrobek, was born in Zychlin, Poland, on January 18, 1899, into a large, poor family that later moved to Warsaw. At the age of eleven, he had to start working in a cardboard factory.

A member of the (illegal) Paper Workers’ Union at the age of fourteen, he became a delegate to the Warsaw Council of Workers and Soldiers in 1919, and then, three years later, secretary of the Textile Workers’ Union. Self-taught and a gifted orator, he gave lectures to union activists and founded cultural institutions: a choir, an orchestra, a drama club… A member of the Jewish Socialist Party, the Bund, he left it to join the underground Communist Party, worked to establish a Yiddish-language group, and became a member of the Jewish bureau attached to the Central Committee.

After being arrested, Aron Skrobek was sent to the Kartus-Bereza concentration camp, where he spent seventeen months. Released on bail thanks to a union fundraiser, he emigrated to Paris in 1936, where he became involved in the progressive Jewish movement and served as an editor for the Yiddish newspaper *Naïe Presse* (*New Press*). As head of the organization “Friends of the New Press,” he wrote a brochure in Yiddish, published in 1936, about the Bereza camp, where 8,000 political prisoners were interned, thereby spreading information about the White Terror in Poland.

When war was declared, Aron Skrobek enlisted in the French army.

As early as November 1940, he helped found and lead the underground organization “Solidarité.” As an editor for the Jewish underground press, in 1941 he organized demonstrations in front of the Beaune-la-Rolande camp, at the Maison du Prisonnier, and in front of the Red Cross headquarters. He also initiated other demonstrations, notably against the wearing of the yellow star, in front of Drancy.

Arrested after being denounced on December 16, 1942, Aron Skrobek was imprisoned at the Cherche-Midi Prison, where he was brutally interrogated. On March 16, 1943, he was transferred to Fort Romainville, which was under German control.

He was deported on July 15, 1943, to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Vosges, where, upon his arrival, he was tortured and then shot by German soldiers on July 21, 1943.