Vital Gayman

Vital Gayman was born in 1897 in Conches-en-Ouche, Normandy. His family were originally Russian Jews. Gayman’s studies were interrupted in January 1915 by his mobilisation in the First World War. Two years later, in 1917, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and went on to study at the the military academy of Saint-Cyr. He then served as a non-commissioned officer in the battle of Oise, where he was injured. In September 1919 he was demobilised.

After the war, Vital joined the French Communist Party and worked as a journalist. His political involvement grew and he became a municipal councillor in Paris. In August 1936, the Communist Party sent Vital to Spain, first as an observer, but in due course he became a commander of the newly formed International Brigades, at the base in Albacete, taking the pseudonym “Vidal”. His wife, Jacqueline Bureau, followed him to Albacete where she started the pharmaceutical department. The couple returned to France in 1937.

Feeling disillusioned after the signing of the German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, Vital left the Communist Party. He was mobilised at the start of the Second World War in 1939 and captured by the Germans in Lyon the same year. As a veteran of the First World War, he was sent back to France and in the spring of 1941 and joined his wife Jacqueline in Font-Romeu, on the French border with Spain. They had owned a pharmacy there since 1940. In Font-Romeau, the couple were active with French Resistance, working with Victor Kapler (a member of the Akak network) helping Jews and Resistance fighters to escape across the border into neutral Spain.

At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht arrived in Font-Romeau and Vital was warned by French customs officers that a “commander Vidal” had been reported at the French and Spanish borders and was being sought. It’s not clear whether this “commander Vidal” was indeed Vital Gayman, or the fellow resistance General, Delestraint, whose pseudonym also was Vidal. In any case, Gayman fled to Toulouse with his father-in-law, Marcel Bureau, who also a communist and Resistance fighter. In Toulouse, Vital was arrested and jailed in Drancy (outside Paris). Because his wife Jacqueline was described as “Aryan”, Gayman was not deported to Germany but put in Norderney camp and sent to work on building sites in Alderney and on the North Sea coast. On 3 September 1944, Gayman escaped from a train which was transporting him and his fellow prisoners East. He evaded capture until Germany’s unconditional surrender was signed in May 1945.

After the war, Vital continued his work as a journalist and met his second wife Janine Cottier at the end of 1945. They were married in 1946 and their son, Jean-Marc, was born that November. Their daughter Sandrine was born in May 1948. According to his children, Jean-Marc and Sandrine, Vital did not talk about the war for a long time, and only discussed it with them in the last years of his life. Vital Gayman died in Paris on 3 December 1985.
Jacqueline Bureau survived the war and opened a pharmacy in the suburbs of Paris.

Sources:

–               Sandrine Gayman and Jean-Marc Gayman, daughter and son of Vital Gayman.

–               The Red Midi, Bulletin of the Association Maitron Languedoc-Roussillon N°18, December 2011

–               1. Jean Larrieu, “The pastor priests of the Pyrénées-Orientales 1939-1945”, Bulletin n° 4 of the Center for Research on Border Problems, University of Perpignan, 1990, pp. 29-33. 2 Jacques Pujol, Protestants in France at war, Editions de Paris, 2000, p. 255.

–               2. G. Bourgeois, Jean Maitron, Claude Pennetier, “Gayman Vital, Isidore, Elie”, DBMOF 29, Paris, Ed. workers, 1987, p. 235-238.

–               3 ADPO, 31 W 32, note by Jean Latscha, prefect, of December 31, 1944. 2André Balent, “The Spanish guerrillas in the Eastern Pyrenees from August 1944 to March 1945, the French authorities and border control”, Le Midi Rouge, newsletter of the Association Maitron Languedoc-Roussillon, December 2009

–               https://deces.matchid.io/id/c_q8OM8e6jL3

–               https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article73189, notice GAYMAN Vital, Isidore, Élie. Pseudo-nymes : ALBERT, VIDAL par Rémi Skoutelsky, version mise en ligne le 10 août 2009, dernière modification le 24 octobre 2019.

–               https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Gayman

Photos:

–               Vital Gayman in 1930. Photo in José Gotovitch & Mikhaïl Narinski et Michel Dreyfus, Peter Huber, Claude Pennetier, Brigitte Studer, Henri Wehenkel, Serge Wolikow (editorial management collective), Biographical Dictionary of the International Labor Movement. Comintern: history and men. Biographical Dictionary of the Communist International in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Moscow (1919-1943), Paris, Éditions de l’Atelier, 2001, p. 303 (illustrates the notice written by Rémi Skoutelsky, pp. 302-304)