Vincent de Moro-Giafferi

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Vincent de Moro-Giafferi (1913)

Vincent de Moro-Giafferi (born June 6, 1878 in Bastia , † November 22, 1956 ) was one of the most famous French defense lawyers in his day .

Life

Moro-Giafferi was of Corsican descent. In 1902, at the age of 24, he became the youngest lawyer ever admitted to practice in Paris. In the First World War he was an officer and received the Croix de guerre . From 1919 to 1928 he was a member of the French National Assembly for Corsica as a member of the radical socialist party with which he supported Pierre Mendès France . As a criminal defense attorney, his rhetorical brilliance (and his wit) was known beyond the borders of France, which is why he was also called the tenor of lawyers (Tenor du Barreau). He always improvised his pleadings. He is particularly known from the trials of the woman serial killer Henri Désiré Landru in 1921, the former Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux , who was accused of advocating a peace treaty with Germany in 1918, the editor of the communist L'Humanité Lucien Sampaix , who was accused of espionage , the murder trial of Joseph Seznec in 1924 (it is still debated whether it was a miscarriage of justice ), the gang of the anarchist Jules Bonnot in 1913, against the murderer Eugène Weidmann in 1939 (the last to be publicly guillotined in France) and the impostor Alexandre Stavisky .

Moro-Giafferi also took part as a judge in the "counter- trial " organized by Willi Münzenberg to the Reichstag fire trial in London in 1933, where he sharply attacked Hermann Göring . He was also involved in other processes that were directed against the machinations of the National Socialists. He was often active on behalf of the Ligue Internationale Contre l'Antisémitisme , the LICA : For example, in the so-called " Jewish trial" in Cairo and in the trial against David Frankfurter in Davos . His adversary in these cases was almost always Hitler's first lawyer, Friedrich Grimm . Moro-Giafferi also prepared the defense of Herschel Grynszpan , who shot and killed the German embassy employee in Paris Ernst vom Rath in November 1938 - in retaliation for the fact that his Jewish family had been deported from Hanover to Poland as part of the Poland campaign . Here, too, was his opponent Grimm, who even managed to influence the process from Switzerland during the " seated war ". Grimm managed to have the process suspended, which after the beginning of the war would undoubtedly have ended with an acquittal of Grynszpan. One day after the occupation of France by the Wehrmacht , Friedrich Grimm, who had come to Paris with Abetz, had already dispatched Gestapo agents to Moro-Giafferi. But they didn't find him because he had already fled to Aix and later to Corsica. The officers ransacked his home, office and LICA office. Among other things, they confiscated Moro Giafferi's files on Grynszpan and handed them over to Grimm. After the war, Giafferi continued his practice as a lawyer until his death. From 1946 to 1956 he was a member of the National Assembly for the RGR (Rassemblement des gauches républicaines, a left-wing group of Republicans).

Quotes

“... can the husband of any of the disappeared say he is a widower? Can he remarry? Can a descendant claim their inheritance? No! The law forbids it and requires sure evidence of death. So, in the name of the law we administer, let's not accuse ourselves of killing these women who are still with us! "

- Plea in the Landru trial

literature

Web links

Commons : Vincent de Moro-Giafferi  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Décès d´un Député , Assemblée nationale France (1946-1958), Gallica.
  2. See Friedrich Karl Kaul, Der Fall des Herschel Grynszpan , Akademieverlag Berlin (East) 1965
  3. "… l'époux d'une quelconque des disparues est-il veuf? Peut-il se remarian? Un descendant prétendre à l'heritage? Non! La loi s'y refuse, faute d'une certitude matérielle du décès! Alors , au nom des lois qui nous régissent, ne nous accusez pas d'avoir tué des femmes qui ne sont pas mortes!… ", according to archived copy ( memento of the original from September 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.avocatnet.net