Jeannette Vermeersch

She is principally known for having been the companion (1932–1947) and then the wife (1947–1964) of Maurice Thorez, general secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), with whom she had three children, born before their union was made official.

Through connections she formed in the union, she came to discover communism, whose growth as a movement was then in full swing in France, several years after the Tours Congress, and she founded a section of Young Communists.

For example, under the guidance of Jacques Duclos, she organised an extraordinary congress of Communist Youth in 1933, retaking control of a movement suspected of drifting in an "avant-gardist" direction.

On 2 October 1939, shortly after World War II began, she accompanied Mounette Dutilleul, who had come to Chauny to bring Maurice Thorez orders to desert, issued by the Third International.

[1] In 1945, after her return to France, Jeannette Vermeersch was elected a deputy to the constituent assembly that met from 21 October 1945 to 5 May 1946, until the first proposal for a new French constitution was rejected by referendum.

In 1950, when Maurice Thorez was stricken with hemiplegia and left to seek treatment in the USSR, Jeannette Vermeersch entered the Politburo of the French Communist Party, of which she was a member until 1968.