Joseph Joffo
Joseph Joffo (born April 2, 1931 in Paris ; died December 6, 2018 in Saint-Laurent-du-Var ) was a French author , screenwriter and actor.
life and career
The son of Roman Joffo, hairdresser, born on May 15, 1890 in Biechewkovici (Russia), who died on November 20, 1943 in convoy 62 during deportation to Auschwitz , and of the violinist Anna Markoff, spent his childhood in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. He and his brother Maurice started school at the Rue Ferdinand-Flocon elementary school, a childhood that he described in his 1995 novel "Agates and Calots".
During the war and the German occupation, the Joffo family were persecuted as Jews. The escape of the two brothers Joseph and Maurice Joffo is told in the novel "A Sack full of Marbles", in which he describes in particular his stays in the cities of Aix-les-Bains and Rumilly. He crossed the demarcation line in Hagetmau (Landes), supported by a young man from the village.
At the end of the war, Joseph Joffo found his mother and three brothers in Paris. His life in the post-war period and his discovery of American values are told in the novel "Baby foot" published in 1977
After finishing school at the age of fourteen, Joseph Joffo and his brothers took over his father's hairdressing salon. When he had to go to bed in 1971 after a skiing accident, he began to write down his memories of his childhood, which he experienced as a Jew in Germany-occupied France . Un sac de billes immediately became a bestseller and was translated into 18 languages. The book was made into a film in 1975 and 2017 and was published in Germany under the title Ein Sack voll Murmeln . Joffo lived with his family in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe and owned several hairdressing salons. For the testimonial "Anna and her orchestra" (1975) he received the RTL award for the general public. It tells of his mother's youth and his journey from tsarist Russia to Paris. "Au Pair" (1984) traces the arrival of a German au pair in a Jewish family immediately after the war.
In 2015 he received the Golden Pen 2016 from the Société des auteurs Savoyards. Joseph Joffo plays Kolb in the film "The Origin of Violence" by Elie Chouraquials . In the last years of his life, Joseph Joffo spent his time between Épeigné-sur-Dême in Indre-et-Loire, Paris and Cannes . He died in Saint-Laurent-du-Var in December 2018 at the age of 87.
Works
- Un sac de billes (1973)
- Anna et son orchester (1975)
- Baby-foot (1977)
- La Vieille Dame de Djerba (1979)
- Tendre Eté (1981)
- Simon et l'enfant (1985)
- Abraham Lévy, curé de campagne (1988)
- La Jeune Fille au pair (1993)
Web links
- Literature by and about Joseph Joffo in the catalog of the German National Library
- Un sac de billes (1975) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Un sac de billes (2017) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Joffo, Joseph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 2, 1931 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 6, 2018 |
| Place of death | Saint-Laurent-du-Var |