Pierre Goldman
Encyclopedia
Pierre Goldman, was a French left-wing intellectual
who was convicted of several robberies and mysteriously assassinated. It has been suspected that the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
(GAL) death squad
was involved in his murder. His half-brother Jean-Jacques Goldman
is a popular French singer.
, the illegitimate son of Alter Mojze Goldman
and Janine Sochaczewska, who were active in the FTP-MOI
Resistance
movement. After the liberation of France, his parents separated, and his father, in concert with a group of former FTP-MOI members, kidnapped him. Thereafter, he had only sporadic contacts with his mother, who returned to Poland
. On one of his visits to Poland, young Goldman visited the Auschwitz concentration camp
.
Having been expelled from various high schools and boarding schools, he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat
and pursued, as an independent auditor, courses at the Sorbonne
. In 1963, he joined the Union of Communist Students
(Union des Etudiants Communistes). In 1966, he refused to do his compulsory military service
, and travelled instead to Cuba
, where he heard Fidel Castro
speak at the Tricontinental Conference in January 1966. Still in Havana for the funerary eve after Che Guevara
's death, he met, through the intermediary, Régis Debray
, a number of Venezuelan guerrilleros.
Returning to Paris, he remained distant towards May '68 activism. In June 1968, he returned to Venezuela, and spent a year there in guerrilla activities. On June 11, 1969, After the attack of an arms depot, his group withdrew in the sierra, and then lost all support from Cuba who had rallied to the Venezuelan government's side. Goldman's then robbed the Royal Bank of Canada
in Puerto La Cruz
on June 11, 1969, taking 2.6 million bolívars
(the biggest hold-up of that year), a robbery later claimed by the FALN guerrilla . Of his comrades, only Goldman was not identified, and he fled afterwards to Paris, in September 1969.
Having quickly spent his remaining money, he staged several robberies of small businesses, in December 1969 and January 1970. During this period, he reportedly considered kidnapping the writer Jean-Edern Hallier
, whom he profoundly disliked. In 1974, he was given a life-sentence by the Paris cour d'assises
, after being convicted of a bloody robbery on December 19, 1969, on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir
near Place de la Bastille
in Paris, in which two pharmacists were killed. He denied having committed this robbery, although he admitted to three earlier robberies. He was condemned to 12 years in prison for the other three robberies and given a life sentence for the December 1969 assassination.
During the five years he spent in prison, he studied philosophy and Spanish, and wrote a book on his own case, Souvenirs obscurs d'un juif polonais né en France (Obscure Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France), published in 1975. The impact of the book on some French intellectuals and personalities, including the actress Simone Signoret
, the writer Françoise Sagan
, Jean-Paul Sartre
and Régis Debray, etc., plus many inconsistencies recorded during the investigation led to a second trial, which started on April 26, 1976. He was finally acquitted for good and freed in October 1976. Afterward, he contributed to left-wing newspapers, joining the Temps Modernes and Libération
.
, however the murder was revendicated to the AFP news agency in the name of an unknown far-right group, Honneur de la police (Honour of the Police). Pierre Goldman's funeral was followed by 15,000 persons. A few hours after his death, his wife Christiane gave birth to a son, Manuel.
The perpetrators of Pierre Goldman's murder have not been found. Various theories exist. The most serious one points to Marseilles' criminal underground, which would have assassinated him on behalf of the GAL
(Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación), a death squad
set up by Spanish officials to fight ETA
in the 1980s. Pierre Goldman allegedly was helping ETA get weapons and planned to create an organization to fight the GAL. On the other side, VSD
magazine points out toward the French secret services — while the former police officer Lucien Aimé-Blanc
, in charge of the Narcotics Department, also pointed out to the presence of a SDECE officer.
In April 2006, Libération
published an interview of former police officer Lucien Aimé-Blanc
, who stated that one of his informants, Jean-Pierre Maïone, had admitted, a few years later, having killed Goldman on behalf of the GAL:
's website)
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
who was convicted of several robberies and mysteriously assassinated. It has been suspected that the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación were death squads established illegally by officials of the Spanish government to fight ETA, the principal Basque separatist militant group. They were active from 1983 until 1987, under Spanish Socialist Workers Party -led governments...
(GAL) death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
was involved in his murder. His half-brother Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman is a Grammy Awards-winning French singer-songwriter. He is hugely popular in the French-speaking world, and since 2003 was the second-highest-grossing French living pop singer, after Johnny Hallyday.- Biography :...
is a popular French singer.
Biography
Pierre Goldman was born near the end of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the illegitimate son of Alter Mojze Goldman
Alter Mojze Goldman
Alter Mojze Goldman was a Polish Jew who was active in the French Résistance during World War II.He was born in Lublin after the death of his father. He fled to France at the age of fifteen because of anti-Semitism. However, he was disappointed with reality in France and tried Germany...
and Janine Sochaczewska, who were active in the FTP-MOI
FTP-MOI
The Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée were a sub-group of the Francs-tireurs et partisans organization, a component of the French Resistance. A wing composed mostly of foreigners, the MOI maintained an armed force to oppose the German occupation of France during World War II...
Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
movement. After the liberation of France, his parents separated, and his father, in concert with a group of former FTP-MOI members, kidnapped him. Thereafter, he had only sporadic contacts with his mother, who returned to Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. On one of his visits to Poland, young Goldman visited the Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
.
Having been expelled from various high schools and boarding schools, he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat
Baccalauréat
The baccalauréat , often known in France colloquially as le bac, is an academic qualification which French and international students take at the end of the lycée . It was introduced by Napoleon I in 1808. It is the main diploma required to pursue university studies...
and pursued, as an independent auditor, courses at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
. In 1963, he joined the Union of Communist Students
Union of Communist Students
The Union of Communist Students is a French student political organization, part of the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France . It was originally founded in 1939 but dissolved after World War II. The UEC was re-created in 1956, along with the MJCF. It is independent from the French Communist...
(Union des Etudiants Communistes). In 1966, he refused to do his compulsory military service
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
, and travelled instead to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, where he heard Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
speak at the Tricontinental Conference in January 1966. Still in Havana for the funerary eve after Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
's death, he met, through the intermediary, Régis Debray
Régis Debray
Jules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
, a number of Venezuelan guerrilleros.
Returning to Paris, he remained distant towards May '68 activism. In June 1968, he returned to Venezuela, and spent a year there in guerrilla activities. On June 11, 1969, After the attack of an arms depot, his group withdrew in the sierra, and then lost all support from Cuba who had rallied to the Venezuelan government's side. Goldman's then robbed the Royal Bank of Canada
Royal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...
in Puerto La Cruz
Puerto la Cruz
Puerto la Cruz is a port city located in Anzoátegui State, in Venezuela. It is the seat of the Juan Antonio Sotillo Municipality. The city has road connections to the state capital, Barcelona, to Lecheria and to Guanta, and has the potential to become the largest and most important metropolitan...
on June 11, 1969, taking 2.6 million bolívars
Venezuelan bolívar
The bolívar fuerte is the currency of Venezuela since 1 January 2008. It is subdivided into 100 céntimos and replaced the bolívar at the rate of Bs.F. 1 = Bs...
(the biggest hold-up of that year), a robbery later claimed by the FALN guerrilla . Of his comrades, only Goldman was not identified, and he fled afterwards to Paris, in September 1969.
Having quickly spent his remaining money, he staged several robberies of small businesses, in December 1969 and January 1970. During this period, he reportedly considered kidnapping the writer Jean-Edern Hallier
Jean-Edern Hallier
Jean-Edern Hallier was a French author.- Overview :Hallier was the son of World War I French General André Hallier. Jean-Edern was born in 1936 and lost an eye during the siege of Budapest, where his father was on diplomatic posting...
, whom he profoundly disliked. In 1974, he was given a life-sentence by the Paris cour d'assises
Cour d'assises
A French cour d'assises or Assize Court is a criminal trial court with original and appellate limited jurisdiction to hear cases involving defendants accused of major felonies or indictable offences, or crimes in French, and one of the few to be decided by jury trialUnder French law, a crime is any...
, after being convicted of a bloody robbery on December 19, 1969, on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir
Richard-Lenoir (Paris Metro)
Richard-Lenoir is a station of the Paris Métro, serving line 5.The name refers to the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, named after the industrialist François Richard who went by the name Richard-Lenoir after the death of his business partner Joseph Lenoir-Dufresne....
near Place de la Bastille
Place de la Bastille
The Place de la Bastille is a square in Paris, where the Bastille prison stood until the 'Storming of the Bastille' and its subsequent physical destruction between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790 during the French Revolution; no vestige of it remains....
in Paris, in which two pharmacists were killed. He denied having committed this robbery, although he admitted to three earlier robberies. He was condemned to 12 years in prison for the other three robberies and given a life sentence for the December 1969 assassination.
During the five years he spent in prison, he studied philosophy and Spanish, and wrote a book on his own case, Souvenirs obscurs d'un juif polonais né en France (Obscure Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France), published in 1975. The impact of the book on some French intellectuals and personalities, including the actress Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret was a French cinema actress often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top...
, the writer Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and Régis Debray, etc., plus many inconsistencies recorded during the investigation led to a second trial, which started on April 26, 1976. He was finally acquitted for good and freed in October 1976. Afterward, he contributed to left-wing newspapers, joining the Temps Modernes and Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
.
September 20, 1979 assassination
On September 20, 1979, he was assassinated at point-blank range in Paris. Eye-witnesses described three Spanish-looking persons. The police first suspected the MafiaMafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
, however the murder was revendicated to the AFP news agency in the name of an unknown far-right group, Honneur de la police (Honour of the Police). Pierre Goldman's funeral was followed by 15,000 persons. A few hours after his death, his wife Christiane gave birth to a son, Manuel.
The perpetrators of Pierre Goldman's murder have not been found. Various theories exist. The most serious one points to Marseilles' criminal underground, which would have assassinated him on behalf of the GAL
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación were death squads established illegally by officials of the Spanish government to fight ETA, the principal Basque separatist militant group. They were active from 1983 until 1987, under Spanish Socialist Workers Party -led governments...
(Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación), a death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
set up by Spanish officials to fight ETA
ETA
ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...
in the 1980s. Pierre Goldman allegedly was helping ETA get weapons and planned to create an organization to fight the GAL. On the other side, VSD
VSD
VSD may refer to:* Vaccine Safety Datalink, a Centers for Disease Control database containing vaccination and health records of over 7 million Americans* Variable speed drive, or adjustable-speed drive, is a specific type of a variable-frequency drive...
magazine points out toward the French secret services — while the former police officer Lucien Aimé-Blanc
Lucien Aimé-Blanc
Lucien Aimé-Blanc is a former French police officer. He was vice chief of staff of the Antigang brigade and also of the Narcotics brigade. He led the Office central de répression du banditisme ....
, in charge of the Narcotics Department, also pointed out to the presence of a SDECE officer.
In April 2006, Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
published an interview of former police officer Lucien Aimé-Blanc
Lucien Aimé-Blanc
Lucien Aimé-Blanc is a former French police officer. He was vice chief of staff of the Antigang brigade and also of the Narcotics brigade. He led the Office central de répression du banditisme ....
, who stated that one of his informants, Jean-Pierre Maïone, had admitted, a few years later, having killed Goldman on behalf of the GAL:
External links
http://www.nouvelobs.com/articles/p2118/a270845.html June 9, 2005 Nouvel Observateur article on Michaël Prazan's book About Pierre Goldman (on Jean-Jacques GoldmanJean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman is a Grammy Awards-winning French singer-songwriter. He is hugely popular in the French-speaking world, and since 2003 was the second-highest-grossing French living pop singer, after Johnny Hallyday.- Biography :...
's website)