On September 26, 1939, Daladier dissolved the Communist Party, accusing it of colluding with the enemy. All labor, cultural, and sports organizations affiliated with the Party were also banned.
Contacts between the leadership of the PCF—which has gone underground—and M.O.I. officials have been temporarily suspended. The Yiddish-language newspaper, the Naïe Presse , was published until the end of September 1939 and was subsequently banned as well. The various branches of the M.O.I. Jewish section’s network of associations immediately moved their documents and equipment to safety (paper stocks, printing presses, mimeograph machines, stencils, etc.). The experience of operating underground in Eastern Europe had instilled certain reflexes…
The Jewish section’s clandestine activities therefore consist of keeping the ranks of available activists intact (women and men who are not subject to mobilization or who have not enlisted as volunteers), rebuilding the organization, raising funds, and disseminating information.
The first issue of L’Humanité was published in late October 1939; the former editors of *La Naïe Presse* had decided to also distribute, as soon as possible, an underground publication: a double-sided mimeographed leaflet in Yiddish titled Unzer Wort (or Unzer Vort), “Our Word” in English—the voice of the Jews of the M.O.I. facing the war.
