Nadler Mounié

   Samuel Mounié Nadler was born on October 27, 1908, in Gliniany, Poland, to a deeply observant Jewish family.

   He attended rabbinical school, became secretary to Rabbi Shapiro, a member of the Polish parliament, and published poems in the newspaper *Der Yud*, the official publication of the religious Aguda party.

   Beginning in 1932, Nadler broke away from his social circle and joined the group of progressive writers in Warsaw known as *Di literariche tribune* (The Literary Tribune).

   Economic hardship and anti-Semitism drove him into exile in France. After earning a degreein electronic engineering, he was once again drawn to journalism.

   As a member of the Jewish section of the M.O.I., he became one of the most influential editors of the progressive Yiddish-language newspaper *Naïe Presse*, founded in 1934. His occupation included serving as editorial secretary, reporter, critic, and columnist, writing under various bylines.

   In 1934, Nadler published a prophetic poem in Yiddish; here is an excerpt:

“Let them put up a hundred seals”

Let them put locks on the doors

And confiscate a thousand times as much.

As long as there is blood in our veins

And paper,

Your Voice, My Revolutionary Press

Will Not Be Silenced

We’ll print, we’ll print, without stopping

Everywhere.

On printing presses, on typewriters, on stones

To be lithographed and mimeographed.

In storage rooms, basements, and attics.

In the forests, in the barns, and on the wastelands.

“And tomorrow our newspaper will be published again.”

   In September 1940, he was one of the co-founders of “Solidarité,” an underground mutual-aid organization that later became a Resistance group. He worked to organize Jewish immigrant intellectuals and continued his journalistic activities as editor-in-chief of *Unzer Wort*, the underground edition of *Naïe Presse *; he also wrote for the French-language editions *Notre Voix* and *Notre Parole*.

   He was responsible for the first issue of the newsletter *J’accuse*, dated April 1942, which brought to the attention of the general public the crimes of which Jews were the victims.

   In May 1942, two members of the Communist Party’s Organisation Spéciale (the OS) were killed during an accidental mishandling of explosives. The Gestapo, having been alerted, intensified its hunt for Resistance fighters, Jews, andcommunists, as well as its attacks on the underground Jewish press.

   Nadler was arrested, imprisoned at La Santé, and then sent to the Compiègne camp. He was executed as a hostage on August 11, 1942, at Mont-Valérien.