Helou Faradjallah

Born 1906; died June 26, 1959, in Damascus. Figure in the communist movement in Lebanon and Syria.

Helou Faradjallah was a schoolteacher by profession. In 1931 he joined the Syrian Communist Party (SCP), which united the Communists of Syria and Lebanon. In 1935 he became a member of the party’s Central Committee, and in 1937 he was elected secretary. He was imprisoned from 1939 to 1941. After the SCP split into the Syrian Communist Party and the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) in 1944, Helou Faradjallah was elected secretary of the Central Committee of the LCP. Between 1948 and 1958, when the Communist parties of Syria and Lebanon again functioned as a single united Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon, he was a member of the Central Committee and of the party leadership. In November 1958 he became secretary of the Central Committee of the LCP. On June 25, 1959, he illegally entered Damascus, was betrayed by an agent provocateur, and perished in the torture chambers of the secret police.

Helou Faradjallah was the author of numerous articles and pamphlets dealing with the national-liberation struggle of the peoples of Syria and Lebanon.