, known as Tcharny (1904–1991)
Edouard Kowalski, whose real name was Samuel Goldziuk, was born on April 16, 1904, in Szczuczyn, Poland. Between 1926 and 1929, he studied mathematics and physics at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He joined the Polish Communist Party (KPP) in 1925. He was already a member of the student organization “Zycie.”
In 1928–1929, he was a member of the Communist Party’s regional committee in Kraków. In 1929, he was arrested by the authorities and released after a month due to lack of evidence. Later, he was wanted by the police, so the Party sent him to Czechoslovakia and then to Berlin, where he remained for six months as a political refugee with the help of the International Red Aid. Arrested in Berlin during the European Peasants’ Congress, he was released. The German Communist Party sent him to France in the summer of 1930.
In France, he first settled in Paris and then in Toulouse in early 1932. He joined the PCF. He worked for a year at a company as a warehouse worker. Wanted by the police for his activist activities, he fled to Paris in 1934, where he led“l’Entraide Ouvrière”and helped launch *Naïe Presse*, the Yiddish-language daily newspaper of the Jewish section of the M.O.I.
In 1935, together with attorney Henri Lewin, vice president of the LICA (International League Against Anti-Semitism), he worked on a draft legal status for immigrants; at the same time, he served as secretary general of the World Rally Against Racism. An excellent orator, he impressed the activists who attended the Wednesday evening meetings of the Kultur Ligue (a cultural organization of the Jewish section of the M.O.I.) on Rue de Lancry.
From 1937 to 1939, Kowalski served as spokesperson for the Jewish section of the M.O.I., where, beginning in late 1938, he assisted Jacques Kaminski as head of the organization. During the Occupation, he led the clandestine Jewish section and later headed the Mouvement National contre le Racisme, of which he was one of the founders in the summer of 1942.
As deputy director of the M.O.I. in charge of armed groups, he became the M.O.I.’s representative for the southern zone in June 1943.
After the Liberation, he returned to Paris and became Secretary General of CADI (Center for Action and Defense of Immigrants), which advocated for legal status for immigrants.
After returning to Poland in 1948, Edouard Kowalski worked in publishing; he was one of the three national secretaries of the FIR (International Federation of Resistance Fighters) and represented Poland on the organization’s international executive committee.
He died in Warsaw on April 5, 1991.
Reference:
Stéphane Courtois, Denis Peschanski, Adam Rayski, 1989, *The Blood of the Stranger*, Fayard .
