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José Giovanni
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José Giovanni
Joseph Damiani (22 June 1923 – 24 April 2004), known by the pen name José Giovanni, was a French-Swiss writer, filmmaker, and a convicted criminal. He was known for his realistic, gritty crime novels which drew upon his own personal experiences and knowledge of the French underworld.
A former collaborationist and street criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni became a popular author of crime fiction beginning in the 1960s. Several of his novels were adapted to films by directors like Jacques Becker, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Claude Sautet. He also wrote screenplays for several others, and eventually turned to directing, helming some 17 films between 1967 and 2001.
Giovanni's works often praise masculine friendships and advocated the confrontation of the individual against the world. Though he never concealed his criminal past, he was always careful to hide his links with the Nazi occupiers of France during World War II. His collaborationism was eventually exposed in 1993 by the Swiss newspapers Tribune de Genève and 24 Heures.
Of Corsican descent, Joseph Damiani received a good education, studying at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and the Lycée Janson de Sailly. His father, a professional gambler who was sentenced to a year in prison for running an illegal casino, owned a hotel in the French Alps in Chamonix. Damiani worked there as a young man and became fascinated by mountain climbing.
From April to September 1943, Damiani was a member of Jeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) in Chamonix, part of the Vichy Government youth movement controlled by Pierre Laval.
In February 1944, Damiani came to Paris and through his father's friend, the LVF leader Simon Sabiani, he joined Jacques Doriot's fascist French Popular Party (PPF). His maternal uncle, Ange Paul Santolini alias "Santos", who ran a restaurant patronized by the Gestapo, and his elder brother, Paul Damiani, a member of the Vichy paramilitary Milice, introduced Joseph into the Pigalle underworld.
In March 1944, Damiani went to Marseille where he became a member of the German Schutzkorps (SK), an organization which hunted down Service du travail obligatoire - STO (Compulsory Work Service) dodgers. He served as bodyguard to its Marseille chief and took part in many arrests, often blackmailing his victims.
In Lyon, in August 1944, posing as a German police officer along with an accomplice (Orloff, a Gestapo agent who was shot for treason at the Liberation), Damiani blackmailed Joseph Gourentzeig and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg, two Jews who were in hiding. Gourentzeig had bribed a member of the Milice - a friend of Damiani’s – in an attempt to secure his parents' release from a detention camp. They were not freed and Gourentzeig's father, Jacob, was shot by the Germans shortly after, on 21 August 1944, along with 109 Jewish hostages in the Bron (Lyon airport) massacre.
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José Giovanni
Joseph Damiani (22 June 1923 – 24 April 2004), known by the pen name José Giovanni, was a French-Swiss writer, filmmaker, and a convicted criminal. He was known for his realistic, gritty crime novels which drew upon his own personal experiences and knowledge of the French underworld.
A former collaborationist and street criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni became a popular author of crime fiction beginning in the 1960s. Several of his novels were adapted to films by directors like Jacques Becker, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Claude Sautet. He also wrote screenplays for several others, and eventually turned to directing, helming some 17 films between 1967 and 2001.
Giovanni's works often praise masculine friendships and advocated the confrontation of the individual against the world. Though he never concealed his criminal past, he was always careful to hide his links with the Nazi occupiers of France during World War II. His collaborationism was eventually exposed in 1993 by the Swiss newspapers Tribune de Genève and 24 Heures.
Of Corsican descent, Joseph Damiani received a good education, studying at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and the Lycée Janson de Sailly. His father, a professional gambler who was sentenced to a year in prison for running an illegal casino, owned a hotel in the French Alps in Chamonix. Damiani worked there as a young man and became fascinated by mountain climbing.
From April to September 1943, Damiani was a member of Jeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) in Chamonix, part of the Vichy Government youth movement controlled by Pierre Laval.
In February 1944, Damiani came to Paris and through his father's friend, the LVF leader Simon Sabiani, he joined Jacques Doriot's fascist French Popular Party (PPF). His maternal uncle, Ange Paul Santolini alias "Santos", who ran a restaurant patronized by the Gestapo, and his elder brother, Paul Damiani, a member of the Vichy paramilitary Milice, introduced Joseph into the Pigalle underworld.
In March 1944, Damiani went to Marseille where he became a member of the German Schutzkorps (SK), an organization which hunted down Service du travail obligatoire - STO (Compulsory Work Service) dodgers. He served as bodyguard to its Marseille chief and took part in many arrests, often blackmailing his victims.
In Lyon, in August 1944, posing as a German police officer along with an accomplice (Orloff, a Gestapo agent who was shot for treason at the Liberation), Damiani blackmailed Joseph Gourentzeig and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg, two Jews who were in hiding. Gourentzeig had bribed a member of the Milice - a friend of Damiani’s – in an attempt to secure his parents' release from a detention camp. They were not freed and Gourentzeig's father, Jacob, was shot by the Germans shortly after, on 21 August 1944, along with 109 Jewish hostages in the Bron (Lyon airport) massacre.
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