French Resistance

The following pages describe succinctly the activities of the "Third Camp" internationalist nuclei in France during World War II. We do not know of any comprehensive study of this subject.

Pantaleon Casildo Arteaga discovered anarchist ideas at 18 and joined the anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT . At the beginning of the Francoist rising which sparked the Civil War, at the age of 24, he joined the Ascaso Column of the CNT-FAI (the FAI was the Iberian Anarchist Federation, linked to the CNT) and fought on the Aragon front.

Antonio Casanova was born at Betanzas in the Coruna province of Galicia in northern Spain on 7th June 1898.

French youth against the Nazis

Forgotten Heroes

"ALGERIAN
SOUTH-EASTERN FRONT, NORTHERN GROUP, NUM, 93D/31,
M’DILLA,12TH APRIL, 1943.
Extract of order No. 38.
Colonel Delmay of Garenne, commanding the northern group
of the south-eastern Algerian front dictates:

Patchy historical information about the activity of some anarchists - revolutionary and pacifist - in France during World War II and under occupation.

Umberto Marzocchi
Born 10 October 1900 - Florence, Italy, died 4 June 1986 - Savona, Italy

Leonida Mastrodicasa
Born 23 January 1888 - Ponte Felcino, Italy , died 20 March 1942 - Germany

Leonida Mastrodicasa was born at Ponte Felcino, near Perugia, on 23rd January 1888. Son of an anarchist, Iborio, he moved at 16 to Terni to take employment as a metal worker and became an anarchist himself. He founded an anarchist youth group in Ponte Felcino.

Ramon Vila Capdevila, or ‘Caraquemada’ (Burntface) was born in Peguera, near Berga, on the 2nd April 1918. From an early age he was a member of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT. He participated in the Figola uprising in 1932.

Albert Guigui-Theral
Born 1903 - Algeria, died later than 1945 - place and date unknown

Born in Algeria, raised in Paris, Guigui-Theral returned to Algeria in 1918, working as a mechanic. As an activist he was involved in the metal workers' strikes and sent to jail for his anarchist propaganda.