Members and friends of our Party have been hurt to learn of the death of comrade Gene Zbikowski on October 31 from a sudden heart attack at age 62. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his wife Noémie and their three children. Gene had been our correspondent in France for well over a decade, writing articles about workers’ struggles there and throughout Europe. He also translated editorials and articles into French for Le Defi (the French edition of CHALLENGE) which were very useful for the Party in Haiti. He also sent us a stream of translations of exposés appearing in the French press.
Gene joined the Party in Minnesota in the early 1970s. He later settled in Nantes, married and raised a family while teaching at a community college from which he recently retired. At one point he discovered CHALLENGE on the Internet and contacted our then-editor, comrade Luis Castro, who suggested he write for the paper. Gene said he had always wanted to be a journalist and told us, “Now I have my chance!”
Over the years Gene covered the many strikes and rebellions raging in France, sent us pictures of the workers’ fightbacks and their May Day marches, exposed the phony French “communist” party, the pro-capitalist Socialists, and the ruling class’s spread of anti-Muslim and anti-Black racism. He especially stripped bare the sellout nature of the pro-boss trade union misleaders. He would often intersperse the writings of Marx and Lenin where applicable in his reports on the class struggles in France.
During one nation-wide strike, he invited a Party comrade to Nantes where he was warmly greeted as he brought solidarity greetings to sanitation workers on the picket lines there.
Comrade Gene’s contribution to the international communist movement being built by PLP will be deeply missed. His legacy will be everlasting in all his reports of workers’ class struggles that will become stepping stones in the march towards communist revolution.