Jean van Heijenoort’s Opinion

[The following interview with Jean van Heijenoort was obtained by George Weissman on June 15, 1976.

[Van Heijenoort served as a secretary to Trotsky in Turkey, France, Norway, and Mexico.]

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Question. You have seen some of the material published by the Healyite press attacking the SWP and in particular Joseph Hansen and George Novack; for example, the booklet Security and the Fourth International. Have you formed any opinion about the accuracy or merit of the contents of these charges?

Answer. I would like to talk ﬁrst about things which concern me directly and which I know very well and which are alluded to in the booklet, namely the coming of Zborowski to the United States. As a matter of fact, I did not help Zborowski to come to the United States, on the question of a visa and so forth. But I might have very well, if the occasion had arisen.

He was considered a comrade in the organization. He had been trusted by Sedov and Trotsky. Even when these two were alive, they dismissed the charges against him, and nothing more concrete had been presented since then.

So, as a matter of fact, I didn’t do anything to bring him to the States, but if I had had the occasion, I would have done it very well as for any other comrade in the organization.

Now, as for the relations between Zborowski and the SWP, there were none practically. There was a small group of European émigrés, French and other nationalities, in New York. We were perhaps eight or ten, and Zborowski was one of them. I was acting as a kind of secretary for that group. And I would maintain the connection with the SWP. I would very often meet SWP members, but the other members of the group, on the whole, did not have contact with the SWP. I saw somewhere in the booklet that there were SWP meetings in Zborowski’s apartment on the West Side. That's absurd. It just does not correspond at all to the actual situation.

Then some point is made that I was International Secretary of the Fourth International at that time and that Zborowski had access to a lot of information. Well, that’s false too. It’s true that I was Intemational Secretary at that time. But my work as International Secretary was kept quite separate from my work as secretary, or organizer, of that small émigré group. These were two entirely different things.

Q. Since the publication of that booklet by the American Healyites, their press has begun another series of articles on the same subject strongly attacking, among other things, George Novack because he was on a committee during the war years which helped political refugees in France to come to the United States; and among those so helped was the GPU agent Etienne (Zborowski). What is your opinion of the merit of this charge against Novack?

A. First of all I don’t consider that a charge. I don’t have any recollection one way or another whether Novack had anything to do with the visa and affidavits for Etienne. But in a sense, it was his duty,

namely Novack’s duty, to get refugees out of France.

And let us imagine, for instance, the following hypothetical situation—that Trotsky had been alive after the fall of France and I had been with him in Mexico. Then I can very well imagine that Trotsky would have asked me to approach the Mexican authorities and get a visa for Zborowski out of Europe. It’s the kind of thing I did in 1938 and 1939 for Czech refugees and that would have been totally in place at that time. So I really don’t see that a fact like that, if it is a fact, can be brought against Novack. The whole story is absurd.

Q. I understand that you have written, or are just now completing, a book of memoirs about your years with Natalia and Leon Trotsky. In it do you give any description or evaluation of the character and trustworthiness of Joseph Hansen and George Novack?

A. Yes. I have a few months more of work. I hope by the end of the year the writing will be over. Of course I speak about many things in that book, but one of them is the relationship between Trotsky and the secretaries and other people around him, and one of these people is Joe Hansen.

I must say that the relations between Trotsky and Hansen were the best, and with time, they always improved. Trotsky had respect and affection for Joe Hansen, for his ﬁrmness and stable character, and I don’t recall any incident that would reﬂect against Joe in I any way. The relations were really the best that one could imagine, which was not the case with everybody else. I think Joe was one of those which were most successful as a secretary with Trotsky.

Q. What would be your reaction, then, to the charges by Healy that Joe Hansen was criminally negligent in the events surrounding the assassination of Leon Trotsky and that he is in some way to be considered an accomplice of the GPU and a possible accomplice of the FBI?

A. As to the motivations of Healy I don’t know anything at all. From what I have seen so far and from what I know, of course, there is no content at all. It is a huge hue and cry about nothing.

A number of authentic and interesting documents are reproduced. And there they are. And then after that comes some kind of wild commentaries, unconnected with the documents. The whole thing is absurd to me. If Healy has some speciﬁc facts, he should present them. But so far I have not seen any such facts.

Q. On the security of the Trotsky household, do you think that greater vigilance or preparation on the part just of the secretaries and guards could have saved Trotsky’s life? Didn’t a great deal depend on the attitude of the Mexican government and its police in addition to what the guards could do? And in general what is your opinion of the responsibility of the guards in this assassination?

A. Of course when we look back we can always say, “Ah, well, if we had known . . .” or “If we had done this or that . . .” But one must realize what the situation was. It ‘was a few people, which could be counted on the ﬁngers of one hand, trying to protect the life of one man against attacks coming from the government of a big country which had at its disposal an unlimited supply of men, money, and technical means.

And I remember very well, in those sleepless nights of watch on Prinkipo, that I did not have illusions in the effectiveness of our guard. We gave our time, our attention, our efforts, but without much illusion as to their effectiveness. If one attempt could not succeed one way, the next would be tried in another way. The means against us were unlimited.

Of course we can always regret―and I’m sure Natalia regretted not to have seen more in Mercader―and Trotsky himself, for that matter. We can always regret that more was not done. But that’s not the same thing as accusing speciﬁc persons of speciﬁc negligence.

Q. In regard to the accuracy of the booklet Security and the Fourth International, you had a comment to make about the photograph that appears on page 66.

A. Yes. With all the accumulation of documents by Healy (not written by him; he just put them together), some are interesting, of course, and it is nice to read them. But I feel there is not a deep understanding by Healy himself of what he is doing. For instance, on page 66 there is a picture which according to the caption is supposed to represent Mercader with his Mexican lawyer.

Now, “Mercader” is not Mercader in that picture; it’s really the French lawyer for Trotsky, Gérard Rosenthal. And the person in the center which is supposed to be the Mexican lawyer of Mercader is in fact Leon Sedov. The whole thing is absurd. And it betrays a complete lack of understanding of what is being done.

SOURCE: Healy’s Big Lie: The Slander Campaign Against Joseph Hansen, George Novack, and the Fourth International. Statements and Articles by Joseph Hansen, George Novack, John and Mary Archer, George Breitman, Charles Curtiss, Sam Gordon, Betty Hamilton, C.L.R. James, Pierre Lambert, Bala Tampoe, Ernest Tate, Charles Van Gelderen, Jean Van Heijenoort, ‘Nea Poreia’, ‘Red Weekly’, ‘Socialist Action’, ‘Socialist Press’. Education for Socialists [New York: Socialist Workers Party], December 1976. 87 pp. “Jean van Heijenoort’s Opinion,” pp. 66-67.

Jean van Heijenoort: Essential Books

Opinion of C.L.R. James [on Joseph Hansen & George Novack]

Marx and Marxism Web Guide

Offsite:

George Edward Novack and Evelyn Reed papers, 1933-1992
(University of Wisconsin - Madison Libraries)

CONTACT Ralph Dumain

Uploaded 14 February 2026