Léon Blum - “... not so much a prison as a cellar or a grave.”

The son of a well-to-do Jewish family, Léon Blum grew up in Paris and studied law. He became a lawyer and literary critic and joined the Socialists. After World War I, he rose to become the party’s mastermind and leader. He first served as prime minister of France in 1936/37, during which time he introduced social reforms. After the occupation of France, the Vichy government had him arrested and extradited to Germany. From April 1943 onward, the SS held him as a special prisoner in the falconer’s lodge at the Buchenwald concentration camp. He survived, returned to Paris, and became France’s first special ambassador to Washington. As an essayist he advocated a humanist form of Socialism with a European perspective.