December 13: From Prisoner to Prime Minister

After two years of imprisonment in Buchenwald and Dachau, Léon Blum became prime minister of France for the third time on this date in 1946. The first Jew and first socialist to have served in that position, Blum remained in the country after the Nazi invasion and used his 1942 treason trial to excoriate the collaborationist government. During his first two stints as prime minister, between 1936 and 1938, Blum’s government established the 40-hour work week and nationalized the Bank of France and the armaments industry. His popular front government split, however, over his non-interventionist policy in Spain (where Franco was leading a fascist uprising with Nazi support). Blum was subjected to verbal and physical assaults by anti-Semites throughout his political career, and lost his brother, Rene, founder of the Ballet de l’Opéra à Monte Carlo, to the murderers in Auschwitz.

“Leisure is not laziness . . . leisure is rest after labour and is a sort of reconciliation with the natural life from which it is so often separated and of which it is so often defrauded.” —Léon Blum