Joseph Joanovici

Joseph Joanovici , also spelled Joinovici (1905? - 1965), Jewish, scrap merchant, supplier of metal to the Nazis, also provider of Resistance, possible agent of the Soviet Comintern ; he will become billionaire before being condemned for collaboration and will die in prison after an escape bid and his extradition by Israel.

Its biography is so much prone to guarantee Joseph Joanovici had the art of enjoliver for embobiner its interlocutors.

Born in Bessarabia with Kichinev officially February 20th 1905 - but it is possible that it cheated on its age - parents killed shortly after in Pogrom - but it may be that is false -, Joseph Joanovici arrives in France in 1925 and, although illiterate, by its work and its gouaille becomes “Mr Joseph”, a considered scrap merchant with Clichy in Parisian suburbs.

When the Second world war bursts, the scrap merchant understands that being Juif, it will need “protection” and that the Germans will need people to sell metal to them, Money.

During the four years of the Occupation, it accumulates a colossal fortune, which is used to him to maintain the relations as many as various.

Thus, it provides the Nazis as well as the Résistance, and perhaps also the Soviet information.

It has its entries everywhere: in the brothels of luxury of the kind Chabanais or One Two Two, in the building of Gestapo of the Foch avenue where Pierre Brossolette and Jean Moulin lived their last hours, in the restaurants of the black-market where “the Germans and their mercenaries French gestapists found themselves as well that people of cinema who thereafter will pride themselves to have carried out films subversive with the beard of the censure”.

With blows of envelopes, of fine supper and backhander, it makes sure the good graces of any kind, of the collaborationists to Resistance, the executants of simple works to the high ranking officials.

Witness this dialog of comedy with Henri Lafont. “After all, Joseph, you are only one dirty youpin!” he launch one evening the chief of the Gestapo Frenchwoman in the middle of guests in uniform. Then Joanovici raises its goblet of champagne and counterpart: “That costs how much more the being, Hauptsturmführer?”.

Returned peace, Joseph Joanovici was not immediately worried, considering it delivered to resistant his ex-relations “work”.

Thus he denounces the menbres Gestapo Frenchwoman allowing the arrest of Pierre Bonny and Henri Lafont the August 31st 1944 in a farm of Seine-et-Marne.

But the businesses continue and thanks to its contacts in the group of resistant Honneur of the Police force, it profited from the exclusiveness on the sales and purchases in American stocks just after the war.

Nevertheless Joseph Joanovici is stopped in 1949 after having exhausted all his “protections”.

Its lawsuit is carried out without excessive zeal, not to undoubtedly splash the higher realms with IVe République.

It pronounces a historical sentence there: “I was not sold to the Germans since it was me which paid them”.

Joanovici bails out five years of prison. Assigned to residence with Mende, it launches out in October 1957 in a mare which leads it to Haïfa via Geneva and Casablanca.

The State of Israel, because of the past of collaborator Nazi of Joanovici, refuses to make it profit from the law of the return, which applies to all the Jews, and reforwards it in the French prisons.

He will die ruined in 1965.

Deliver

the strange Mr Joseph (Joseph Joanovici) by Alphonse Boudard, edition Robert Laffont, Paris, 1998
(cartoon) It was once in France , volume I " Empire of Mr Joseph" , by Fabien Nury and Sylvain Valley, Glénat 2007.

Telefilm

the strange Mr Joseph , realized by Josée Dayan on a scenario of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt according to the book of Alphonse Boudard, with Roger Hanin in the role of Joseph Joanovici, 2001. This adaptation was criticized for its representation considered to be excessively benevolent of the character of Joanovici.

External bond

Personal site

Random links: