Léon TROTSKY.

Lot 273
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Léon TROTSKY.
Life of Lenin. Youth. Translation by Maurice-Parijanine revised and approved by the author. Paris, Éditions Rieder, 1936. In-8 : paperback. First French edition. First volume only of three. Moving autograph letter signed in French: To his dear friends Synöve and Heinz L. Trotsky 3/IV 1936 Veksal The letter is addressed to two of Trotsky's closest collaborators whose tragic fate illustrates the totalitarian madness of both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. A young communist activist, Heinz Epe (1910-1942) was expelled from the Party in October 1932 for leftism, before having to flee Nazi Germany where there was a price on his head. He fled to Prague in March 1933 where he met his wife, Synöve, and edited the first issues of the journal of the German group in exile, Unser Wort, supporting Trotsky's positions. At the end of September in Paris, he met Trotsky and then moved to Amsterdam where he prepared the February 1934 youth conference, before settling near Oslo, not far from Weksal where Trotsky had settled at the end of 1935. It was there that Trotsky dedicated to him the copy of the French translation of his Life of Lenin. Trotsky having wished to send him to the United States, and because he held a Norwegian passport, Epe obtained a Soviet transit visa in March 1941 and left Sweden on 17 May with his wife and son. Arrested by the Soviet secret service, he was executed on December 28, 1942, shortly after his wife and young son. The Soviet authorities did not inform the Norwegian authorities of the death of the Epe family until 1956. Smudging in the inner margin. Cold stamp of the Michel Lefèvre collection.
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