Boris Holban (20 April 1908 – 27 June 2004) was a Russian-born Franco-Romanian communist known for his role in the French Resistance as the leader of FTP-MOI group in Paris and for l’Affaire Manouchian controversy of the 1980s.

Holban was born as Baruch Bruhman to a working class Jewish family in the town of Otaci in Bessarabia (modern Moldova), a province of the vast Russian Empire.

"[3] As a young man, Bruhman joined the illegal PCR (Partidul Comunist Român-Romanian Communist Party) in 1929 and was imprisoned in 1930 for a short time for his political activities.

[3] On 28 December 1937, King Carol II of Romania appointed Octavian Goga of the extreme right-wing National Christian Party as the prime minister.

[5] Through he was a Communist and atheist, Holban always treasured the medal of the Virgin Mary given to him by Sister Studler, a woman he portrayed as very saintly in a biography of her written by him that was published in 1999.

[4] In April 1942, the PCF created an armed wing of its Main d'Oeuvre Immigrée ("Migrant Workforce") representing immigrants called the FTP-MOI under the leadership of Holban.

[9] One of Holban's superiors, the Franco-Polish Communist Adam Rayski observed that a disproportionate number of the members of the FTP-MOI were veterans of the International Brigades who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, providing a great advantage as these were men who had experienced combat and were well accustomed to handling guns and bombs.

[8] On 5 August 1942, in an attack organized by Holban, three Romanians belonging to the FTP-MOI tossed grenades into a group of Luftwaffe men watching a football game at the Jean-Bouin Stadium in Paris, killing eight and wounding 13.

[14] Bowd wrote in 2014: "The detachments commanded by Bruhman turned out to be the most courageous and deadly arm of the Communist resistance in the Paris area: as foreigners, and often Jews, they had little to lose in occupied France, while a long experience of clandestine activity and civil war had made them well-prepared.

Brigade spéciale 2 used the favorite filature (spinning) methods of the French police, carefully watching one member of the FTP-MOI, if necessary for months, to learn about his or her contacts, and then following the others.

On 28 September 1943, the FTP-MOI scored its most spectacular success with the assassination in Paris of SS Standartenführer Julius Ritter, whose role in working with the Service du travail obligatoire (STO) to bring forced labor to Germany had made him one of the most hated men in France.

Holban assigned Luca Boico to lead the investigation into who betrayed the groupe Manouchian, which led them to the political commissar, Joseph Davidowicz, whom it was discovered had cracked under torture after being arrested by Brigade spéciale 2 in October 1943.

After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, Holban rejoined the French Army as the commander of battalion 51/22, leading a unit mostly made up of FTP-MOI men that was dissolved in June 1945.

[26] Holban admitted that he was promoted for political reasons, writing: the more I integrate into military life and activity, the more I realize that my knowledge in this area is clearly insufficient for the functions I perform.

It was the start of the Cold War and the Resistance in France, even that of the Communists, was plagued with a double flaw: having taken place in an 'imperialist' country and having had former volunteers from Spain as protagonists, Jews, in other words 'cosmopolitan' elements".

[29] Holban made the mistake of talking at length to a group of Romanian-American Communists from Detroit who were visiting Bucharest in early 1950, which led to the accusation that he was an American spy.

[19] In 1969, a book entitled Roumains de la Résistance française (Romanians of the French Resistance) was published in Paris with one chapter written by Holban.

[32] The American historian Patrick Young noted: "The images and stories surrounding the Resistance provided an updated foundation myth for the French republic, after its startling failure in 1939.

Fully incorporated into the school curriculum and in official commemorative culture as part of the civic catechism, the Resistance became a vital shared reference point for the French.

The elevation of Jean Moulin as the transcendent figure of resistance--culminating in the solemn transfer of his remains to the Pantheon in 1964--was particularly emblematic of this myth-making impulse in post-war French political culture.

[5] With the historian Stéphane Courtois working as a consultant on the film, Des terroristes à la retraite depicted the PCF leadership as willing to use the groupe Manouchian cynically to achieve their own ends.

[35] In Des terroristes à la retraite, Mélinée Manouchian spoke with great conviction as she named Holban as the man responsible for her husband's capture.

[36] The American historian Brett Bowles noted that Boucault gave a series of close-up shots of Mélinée Manouchian's face as she spoke with great passion and anguish, which was intended to inspire the viewers to sympathise with her.

[36] By contrast, Bowles noted that Boucault by shooting Holban from in a long shot as he watched video of Mélinée Manouchian's interview was intended to inspire viewers to dislike him.

[36] Bowles also noted that: "Dressed in a dark suit, tie, and tinted glasses, with a smoldering cigarette in his left hand and a lighter in his right, Holban looks like a cold, calculating crime boss from a noir gangster film rather than a heroic former resister.

[40] On 28 June 1985, the Communist weekly newspaper La Voix de l’Est ran an article that accused "un certain Olivier" ("a certain Oliver"-another of Holban's aliases) as having exaggerated his role in the resistance.

[40] Adler took up Holban's cause in a series of articles, arguing that he was leading a band of marquis guerillas in the forests of the Ardennes in the fall of 1943, and had not been in Paris for quite some time when the groupe Manouchian was arrested.

He is not coming out of retirement today because he is seriously questioned: Mélinée Manouchian accuses him of having indirectly caused the death of her husband and his comrades, by sending them the order to remain on site in Paris when they knew they were threatened with imminent arrest.

There is also the awareness of the exclusion of the vast majority of Jewish cadres of the communist resistance, in the USSR and in the popular democracies, the relegation of their epic for many years even by the PCF itself.

In 1989, Holban published his memoirs Testement in Paris, which was critical of many of the decisions taken by the French Communist leaders during the war while seeking to rebut allegations of being a Gestapo informer.