Francois Fejto
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François Fejtö was born on 31 August 1909 in a little town in Hungary during the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph. Jailed in 1932-33 for his left-wing activism – he befriended the great Communist poet Attila Jôzsef – he chose Social-Democracy and exile to France in 1938. Close to Emmanuel Mounier’s revue Esprit, he was friendly with Clara Malraux, Edgar Morin, Camus and others. After the Second World War – during which he never left France – he went to work for Agence France-Presse, where he was an attentive observer of what was going on beyond the Iron Curtain. In 1949, he publicly defended Lazslo Rajk, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs who was sentenced to death and executed after a Stalinist trial; and in 1956, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, he protested against the Soviets crushing the Budapest uprising. Constantly in the midst of intellectual debate, he wrote frequent commentary for both the French and international press (Le Monde, La Croix, Il Giornale, le Corriere della Serra, Mgayar Hirlap, Nepszabadsag, Word Today and others) as well as for several prestigious revues.
He has authored many books, including Histoire des démocraties populaires (3 volumes, 1952-1969-1991, published by Le Seuil), Requiem pour un empire défunt (1988, Lieu commun), Dieu et son juif (Grasset, 1960, Pierre Horay 1997) and Le Passager du siècle (with Mauricio Serra, Hachette Littérature, 1999).
He died in June 2008 in Paris.