Joseph Joffo (2 April 1931 – 6 December 2018) was a French author. A noted autobiographer, Joffo was perhaps best known for his memoir ''Un sac de billes'' (''

A Bag of Marbles ''A Bag of Marbles'' (french: Un sac de billes) is a Second World War autobiographical novel by the French Jewish author Joseph Joffo. It tells the story of his flight, as a small boy, with his brother Maurice to escape from Nazi occupied France ...

''), which has been translated into eighteen languages.

Early life

Joffo was born in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

in the 18th arrondissement. He left school at 14 with a certificat d'études (a former school leaving certificate, taken at the end of primary education) in his pocket and joined his brothers in the family's barber shop.

Career

''A Bag of Marbles''

His memoir ''Un sac de billes'' (''A Bag of Marbles''), written as a novel, tells the story of Joffo as a young Jewish boy during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. When Joffo was ten, his father gave him and his brother five thousand

francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' ( King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th cent ...

each and instructions to flee Nazi-occupied Paris by foot, train and bus, and join their brothers Henri and Albert in

Menton Menton (; , written ''Menton'' in classical norm or ''Mentan'' in Mistralian norm; it, Mentone ) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border. Me ...

on the Mediterranean coast, where they would be safe in

Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the Fascism, fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of ...

, unoccupied by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name i