Mauricio was the fifth son of the couple Agustin Grabois and Dora Kaplan, who came from Chisinâu to Brazil. There he became an adherent of Marxism-Leninism and spread communism in the military college. In Rio de Janeiro, Grabois joined the Communist Youth of Brazil and at the age of twenty-two became its leader. After join- ing the National Liberation Alliance (Aliança Nacional Libertadora), an organization which gathered anti-fascist military officers he became one of the leadersof the unsuc- cessful Communist uprising of November, 1935 in Rio de Janeiro, Natal, and Recife. After the failed uprising, he became the editor of an underground Communist newspaper, A Classe Operária (the Working Class). He was arrested in 1941 and re- leased the following year. The overthrow of Getúlio Vargas resulted in thelegalization of Communist organizations of Brazil. In 1945 Maurício Grabois was elected federal congressman and became a member of the Foreign Relations Committee of Brazil. After the Brazilian coup d'état of 1964, Grabois became a proponent of armed struggle to overthrow the military regime. In 1966 the Communist Party of Brazil decided that urban guerrilla warfare tactics were necessary to establish a Communist regime in Brazil. In 1967 Grabois started recruiting guerilla combatants in Par and after a series of clashes with government forces, Grabois had disappeared and later was revealed to have been killed in 1973.