Notes on Survival

A police dossier on Joseph Joanovici might read something like this:

"Born in 1905 in Kishinev in the Balkans, the son of Isaac and Zelta Haia, who were killed later that year in a pogrom. Aliases: Juanesky, Jouanneau, Joinov, Innovici, Joinou, Joseph Levy. Employment: ragpicker, scrap metal dealer, entrepreneur, double agent. Has been a citizen of Rumania and the Soviet Union, but now claims to be a stateless person. Wanted for swindling, nonpayment of taxes, contempt of court, illegal exit. Physical description: short, pudgy, grey-haired, looks vaguely like Alfred Hitchcock."

Mile-Long Queues. In 1927 Joseph Joanovici emerged from the obscurity of the Balkans to settle down in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. In twelve years he progressed from a ragpicker's cart to become a millionaire and one of France's top scrap metal dealers. At the outbreak of World War II, 34-year-old Joanovici tried to enlist in the French army. Turned down because he was still a Rumanian national, he sent his personal check for $3,000 to War Minister Edouard Daladier to help the war effort.

When the Nazis marched into Paris, Joanovici sought to avoid the concentration camps by taking out Soviet citizenship papers (the Nazi-Soviet pact was not yet broken). Taunted later for this, Joanovici snapped: "So, is it a crime? There were queues a mile long outside the Russian embassy."

When Germany attacked Russia in 1941, nimble Joanovici became a Rumanian again by the simple process of buying back his papers from a Vichy French passport official. Later he declared himself a stateless person. Soon the Nazis were knocking at his door, not to arrest him, but to beg humbly for his help. Germany was short of scrap, and Joanovici could supply it.

"How could I refuse?" he asked rhetorically. "If I had said no, the Germans would just have taken it for nothing." So Joseph said yes and, as the chief German scrap agent in France, made a fortune variously estimated from $16 million to $84 million. Once, because of a delivery of defective copper scrap, he was thrown into prison for a few months, but he bribed his guards, and his cell was well stocked with foie gras and smoked salmon.

Aryan Businessman. The Nazis let him out again and, back in his old job, Joseph Joanovici became "a state within a state." His payroll included Vichy officials, Gestapo agents, profiteers, speculators, fences, gangsters. He once explained the niceties of his profession: "I had lunch with the Vichy official whose job it was to see that all businesses were run by Aryans. He noticed I spoke with an accent and asked me where I was born. I told him I would like to give him money regularly, as a contribution to the Red Cross."

Joanovici, in the classic fashion of those who reinsure, did not neglect the other side: he contributed heavily to the French resistance, claims to have saved thousands of Jews from deportation. Resistance Leader Albert Bayet testified that "Joanovici supplied us with arms without which the 1944 Paris uprising could not have occurred." In the confusion of the liberation of France, Joseph even got a "certificate of honor" as a "resistance fighter without uniform," from the hands of Robert Lecourt, who became France's Minister of Justice. Police agents sent to investigate Joanovici later turned up as officers in his manifold companies.

A Staggering Fine. In 1949 his luck wavered. Found guilty in Paris of speculation, tax evasion and "illicit profitmaking," Joanovici was sentenced to five years in prison and fined a staggering billion francs (roughly $3,000,000). After serving two years, he was let out but confined to the small southern city of Mende (pop. 7,700) in one of the most impoverished areas of France. Within months, Mende was a boom town. A telephone operator had to be hired whose sole job was handling Joanovici's calls to world capitals. His monthly phone bill ran to 600,000 francs; he spent 30,000 francs daily on entertaining; he contributed heavily to local sports and charities and was on the best of terms with everyone, from the prefect to the policeman assigned to guard him.

Regularly every month Joanovici sent off a check for a million francs to the French treasury, boasted: "I am France's most conscientious taxpayer!" Admitted a business rival: "Armed simply with a telephone, Joanovici practically controlled the world price of copper scrap."

In November 1957 Joanovici got police permission to pay a visit to his mistress in Paris. He was not seen again; but the Minister of the Interior received a letter in which Joanovici "regretfully announced" that "I am not able to earn enough money to reimburse the state . . . therefore I am compelled to leave France." Days after his departure, the police unearthed a vast financial scandal: groups of businessmen had looted a billion francs from the treasury by obtaining tax rebates on nonexistent metals and other goods. Said the chief accused, one Pierre Bercque: "I was just a cog in the machine. The real boss of our outfit was Joanovici."

Joanovici was reported seen in Germany, Switzerland, Egypt. But he turned up in Haifa, Israel, in a small group of Jewish refugees arriving by plane from Morocco. He gave his name as Joseph Levy. "All ten of the passengers on the plane had passports in the name of Joseph Levy," he adds with a grin.

Initialed Gown. At his sister's modest two-room flat in Haifa he became a pampered guest, lounging about in a blue dressing gown initialed J.J. Israel has no extradition treaty with France, and under Israel's sweeping Law of the Return, Joanovici was confident of obtaining Israeli citizenship. But Joanovici's acute perceptions were getting a bit blurred: he had forgotten that, since the Suez invasion, France and Israel have become the staunchest allies, and that a dubious new immigrant would not weigh importantly in the scales against reasons of state. After 14 months of legal wrangling, the Israeli government ruled against Joanovici, and he was put aboard a ship bound for Marseille, with the unusual distinction of being the only one in a million Jewish immigrants to Israel ever to be expelled.

Last week at Marseille, besieged by French police, Joanovici at first petulantly refused to set foot on French soil. But at last, after a conference with his lawyer, he walked down the gangplank smoking a fat cigar, smiling pudgily for the photographers. To reporters he said airily: "I have no fears because I have confidence in French justice." To a welcoming friend, he muttered an aside: "Don't worry--I'll get out of it again."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.