Word: duvall
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...wife did not want him to write the letter; she was sure it would only get them all into trouble. But Jean Duval, factory worker, had made up his mind. "Gentlemen," he wrote to editors of the conservative Paris newspaper Le Monde, "you often criticize the U.S.S.R. . . . Well! in France one sees 'terror' and 'famine,' yes, famine...
...Duval went on to explain that he was the father of six children, made 3,500 francs ($10) a week-scarcely enough to buy food for his family for three days. "If there is a straw mattress in the U.S.S.R., it is a plank in France," he continued. "I tell my children that the employers and the government are nothing but bandits . . . Hate, hate, hate, that is what I teach my children . . . Farewell, gentlemen, eat well, a day will come soon, for we have nothing to lose...
...Cells. The gentlemen in Le Monde's offices printed the letter in full and sent a reporter to investigate the letter writer's story. Jean Duval,* the reporter found, was an enrolled Communist. He had been a plumber, but World War I injuries had made him unfit for his trade, and he had gone to work as an unskilled laborer. During the Nazi invasion in World War II he fled Paris, lost all his belongings. Because of bureaucratic technicalities he received none of the allotments for war victims. Le Monde's reporter described Duval's home...