Eugène Bessis (1871–1951) was a Tunisian civil servant and served three terms as president of the Conseil de la Communauté Israélite. In this capacity he was a principal signatory of a published appeal to Tunisian Jews to support the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to further the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. In June 1932 he spoke at a large public meeting in Tunis protesting the government’s cancellation of a lecture by Nathan Halpern of the JNF.

Bessis became a unionist in 1930 and wrote for the union newspaper Revendiquons, which was sympathetic to the Communists. He joined the Communist P…