Robert Gamzon. Tivliout Harmonie.

French-Jewish Partisan leader Robert Gamzon (1905–61), co-founded in 1923 the Eclaireurs Israélites de France (eif), which was to become the most popular Jewish youth movement throughout France and French North Africa. From 1939 Gamzon served as a communications officer in the French army. After Germany vanquished France in June 1940, Gamzon moved his movement's institutions to southern France, which was not yet occupied by the Germans, and to French-governed Algeria, both places where many Jews had fled to. He set up children's homes, workshops, welfare centers, and training farms; and organized Jewish cultural courses for youth leaders. In January 1942 Gamzon joined the executive board of the Union of French Jews (UGIF), which was a consolidation of all the Jewish organizations in France. In the summer of 1942 Gamzon created "La Sixième," a clandestine rescue network whose purpose was to help Jews escape the Nazis, manufacture false identity papers and spirit Jewish children and teenagers to safety in Spain or Switzerland. In December 1943 he set up a Jewish underground movement in the Tarn area with youth from his rural work camps along with veteran members of EIF. In June 1944 his group, now a full-fledged military unit, was incorporated into the Free French Army as the Marc Haguenau Company. As area commandant, Gamzon received and assisted Allied specialists in sabotage who parachuted into his zone and set up ambushes against German convoys. After the war Gamzon established a school in Paris for community workers and in 1949, he immigrated to Israel at the head of a group of 50 EIF veterans. An electro-acoustical engineer by profession, Gamzon was appointed laboratory head at the Weizmann Institute. He met his death by accidental drowning. For two related articles about Robert Gamzon