(also known as Adam; b. 1914), Jewish Communist who was active in the anti-Nazi resistance in France during World War II.
Rayski was born to a traditional, middle-class Jewish family in Bialystok. He got involved with Communism at a young age. When he was 18 he left home for Paris, and within just two years he became a full-time reporter for a Communist newspaper called Neie Presse.
From July 1941 until the war's end Rayski worked as national secretary of the French Communist Party's Jewish section. He made several important contributions to Jewish survival in France during the war: he helped develop French Jewish resistance; wrote articles for the underground press; and assisted in the establishment of the Representative Council of French Jews (an umbrella organization of French Jewish associations, established in January 1944, which unified the long-divided native French Jewish and immigrant Jewish organizations).
Many years after the war, Rayski wrote and published a striking autobiography called Nos illusions perdues (Our Lost Illusions, 1985).
