Serge Alexandre Stavisky (20 November 1886 – 8 January 1934) was a French financier and

embezzler Embezzlement is a crime that consists of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type ...

whose actions created a political scandal that became known as the Stavisky Affair.

Early life

Alexandre Stavisky was a

Polish Jew The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...

born in modern-day

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

, whose Russian parents had moved to France.

Career

Stavisky tried various professions, working as a café singer, as a nightclub manager, as a worker in a soup factory, and as the operator of a gambling den. He received French citizenship in 1910. In the 1930s he managed municipal pawnshops in Bayonne but also moved in financial circles. He sold lots of worthless bonds and financed his "hockshop" on the surety of what he called the emeralds of the late Empress of Germany — which later turned out to be glass. In 1927, Stavisky was put on trial for fraud for the first time, charged with swindling millions of francs. However, the trial was postponed again and again, and he was granted bail 19 times. Faced with exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a

Chamonix Chamonix-Mont-Blanc ( frp, Chamôni), more commonly known as Chamonix, is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. It was the site of the first Winter Olympics in 1924. In 2019, it had ...

chalet dying from two gunshot wounds to the head. Surgeons struggled to save him but he died early in the hours of 9 January. Officially, Stavisky committed suicide, but it was widely speculated that he was murdered to keep him silent. In the aftermath of Stavisky's death there was rioting in the streets of Paris, resulting in 250 arrests on 10 January as news of government involvement in the financial scandal broke. The French premier Camille Chautemps was forced to resign owing to the number of ministers wrapped up in the affair, as well as rumours that he had ordered Stavisky's assassination. An official public enquiry was ordered into the affair. Shortly before it began a senior judge, Albert Prince, who was due to be a witness, was found murdered on a railway line near Dijon, having been tricked into travelling there from Paris by means of a bogus telegram claiming his mother was very ill.Daily Mirror headline, 22 February 1934

Death and legacy

Stavisky died on 8 January 1934, in

. He was buried in

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...

in Paris. The lyrics of the 1934 tango contrasts Stavisky and other figures, arriving to the pessimistic conclusion that no one cares to tell good from evil. Hollywood released a depiction in 1937 with ''

Stolen Holiday ''Stolen Holiday'' is a 1937 film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Kay Francis, Claude Rains and Ian Hunter. It is loosely based on the Stavisky Affair, a French political scandal. A Russian con artist worms his way into the upper reach ...

'', starring Claude Rains as Stavisky's fictional counterpart, Stefan Orloff, and

Kay Francis Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 an ...

as his wife. ''Stolen Holiday'' asserted unequivocally that Orloff was shot by police and his death made to look like a suicide. In '' Forces occultes'', a film commissioned in 1942 by the "Propaganda Abteilung", a delegation of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

's propaganda ministry within

occupied France The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...

, Stavisky was presented as both a Freemason and a crook. In 1974, film director

Alain Resnais Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...

told the story in the film '' Stavisky...'' that featured

Jean-Paul Belmondo Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...

in the title role and Anny Dupérey as his wife Arlette.

Early life

Career

Death and legacy

References

Further reading