Yves Montand: What Is In a Name--- Life or Death I have become used to the fact that there is a certain group of celebrities whom many visitors incorrectly assume are Jewish. I have seen these names submitted over and over. Yves Montand ranks way up there. Probably ten people have submitted his name. Yves Montand was, of course, a famous French actor and cabaret singer. He was also an important figure in French politics. He was a man of the “Left” for decades and was closely associated with the Communist Party. His break with the Party and his denunciation of Stalinism was an important event in France.  Montand’s alleged Jewishness is based on the fact that his real name was Ivo Livi. This is sometimes mis-reported as Ivo “Levi”. Montand is listed as Jewish in a couple of books of “Jewish lists”. The Encyclopedia Britannica “on-line” ludicrously lists him as the son of Jewish Italian peasant farmers. He was the son of peasant farmers. However, for historical reasons, Jews are almost never described as peasant farmers. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what the Britannica author did. He saw one reference to Montand as Jewish (wrong) and another reference to Montand as the son of peasant farmers (right) and put them together. One problem: there were/are no Jewish peasant farmers in Italy. A Jew may have lived like a peasant, but he was never classed in that group. A peasant was a member of the “common folk” who usually made his living through farming or as a farm laborer for someone else. For complex historical reasons, Jews were not referred to as peasants in medieval or modern Europe. I have been pointed to one additional source which allegedly proves that Montand was Jewish. One visitor tells me that Montand’s picture hangs on the walls of the famous 2nd Avenue Deli in New York. Readers please understand: Jewhoo agrees that the Deli has great pastrami. Jewhoo has nothing bad to say about the Matzo Ball soup, express or implied. However, the picture gallery is not an unimpeachable source. Now if they had named a sandwich after Montand… Seriously folks, the best source is Montand’s own autobiography, “You See I Haven’t Forgotten" (1992, with Herve Hamon and Patrick Rotman). Montand was born in 1921 in the Tuscan village of Monsumman. His father, Giovanni Livi, started working in the fields at the age of seven. The Livis were (Catholic) tenant farmers and the best of their harvest was handed over to their landlord. Montand’s great-grandfather was literate, an unusual accomplishment at that time for an Italian peasant. He raised Montand’s father and uncles. Only Montand’s father remained on the farm. Montand’s mother, Giuseppina, was the village beauty. She came from a family of devout Catholic peasant farmers who were even poorer than the Livis. Giovanni Livi was drafted into the Italian army during the First World War. It was there he became politically aware. The poor bore the brunt of the army’s casualties. Italy was marked by class strife even before the War. The returning veterans were greeted by a post-war economic depression and Italy’s gains from the war were minimal. Meanwhile, in Russia and elsewhere revolution raged. The Italian Socialist Party gained a third of all votes in the first post-war election and set up a network of industrial and agricultural cooperatives. A wave of strikes spread across the country. In 1921, the Italian Socialist Party split. The majority of the membership went into the new Italian Communist Party. Montand’s father joined the Communist Party and quickly acquired a reputation as a Communist militant in his area. However , his activity was actually just limited to handing out literature and holding public meetings. Yves Montand was born in the midst of these events. His first name “Ivo”, is an unusual Italian first name. He is named after a medieval saint who sought justice for the destitute by pleading their case to the powerful.  The post-war wave of strikes produced a counter-reaction. A former Socialist, Benito Mussolini, founded the Italian Fascist party. The Fascists began a wave of violent attacks on the left wing political parties and cooperatives. In 1922, Mussolini and his Blackshirts marched on Rome and the King made him Prime Minister. Early in 1924, Giovanni was summoned to the local Fascist party headquarters. He was told that he could join the Fascists or face serious consequences. He asked for a little time to “think it over” and fled to Marseilles, France. He intended to emigrate to the United States, but days before he was to leave the American immigration laws changed and the doors to America were closed. In May of 1924, Montand’s mother took him, his brother and sister to Marseilles. The re-united family managed to survive in Marseilles. His father’s business failed, but he managed to find enough other work. His sister became the owner of a successful hair salon and Montand began working there at age 15. His father became a locally important figure in the Communist Party and his older brother a full-time Party activist. Montand grew up in a world where the “Left” was right. His father was a descent, honorable man and not a fanatic. He allowed his devout wife to baptize the children and practice her faith. Meanwhile, the Party gained luster in the eyes of Montand and others by its staunch opposition to fascism and Nazism. Montand’s father was troubled by the purges in Russia and the Hitler-Stalin pact. But he had seen the real face of fascism and not the reality of Soviet communism. He thought the Party he had joined was on the side of equality and an end to nationalism and racism. In this respect, Montand’s family, while not Jewish, mirrored the experience of many Jewish leftists. It is hard to summarize a complex history in a brief column. But in Italy, as in Czarist Russia, the society was marked by gross exploitation of the working classes. Both countries entry into the carnage of the First World War was clearly not in the interest of most of the population. Italy hoped to gain a bit of territory and colonies. Russia sought to assert its influence in the Balkans. In both countries, the elite used nationalism to justify their control of the society. In Czarist Russia, the regime used vicious anti-Semitism to distract the population from their real grievances. In Italy, a hyper-nationalism called fascism was invented which tried to paper over internal differences with patriotic propaganda. Mussolini’s dictatorship destroyed the trade unions and opposition parties , but allowed the upper classes to keep their wealth. In a world such as this, the program of the Communist Party attracted many Jews and other persons who were the victims of economic and/or religious persecution. Montand began his career at age seventeen in Marseilles nightclubs. He was not a natural performer and had to work hard to develop the charming stage presence which marked his later performing style. By the time the Second World War broke out in September 1939, he had established himself as a rising star in Marseilles and had changed his name. France surrendered in May of 1940 to the Germans. Montand performed all over the “unoccupied” southern part of France. This was the area that the collaborationist Vichy government was allowed to administer. In December 1942 the Vichy government ordered all twenty one-year-old males to report to military-style camps where they would spend eight months doing forestry or other work “in the national interest”. Conditions were poor and to make matters worse, the French army officers in charge of the camp reveled in German reports that the Soviet Army was being destroyed by the Germans at Stalingrad. Montand, a born and raised leftist, judged these reports to be propaganda. In this case, he was right. It was just these types of false reports that made Montand, and others, discount true stories of the horrors of Stalinism. Montand was summoned to the camp commandant’s office one day. Also summoned were three other young men with Jewish sounding last names.  The commandant asked him if his name was “Levi” and he said “No”, Livi”. The commandant sent him back to the barracks. The other three young men disappeared from the camp. They were handed over to the Germans like thousands of other Jews by the Vichy regime. A few months later a Gestapo agent met Montand backstage at a theater where Montand was performing. He first tried to engage Montand in a political discussion. The agent then said “You are Jewish”. Montand denied he was Jewish and the agent asked to see his identity card. The agent said “You are Jewish. Your name is Levy, not Livi. You have changed two letters in your name.” “That’s absurd”, Montand replied, “If I had changed anything at I would have changed the whole thing and called myself Dupont.” The Gestapo man gave a sarcastic roar of laughter and let him go. Montand realized that his betrayer was a woman he almost had sex with a few days before. She had screamed when she saw his penis and ran out of the room before they could have sex. Due to a childhood infection, Montand had a retracted foreskin and appeared circumcised. She thought he was Jewish and betrayed him to the Gestapo. (Montand later saw her in the company of the Gestapo agent). What a madhouse world in which a lover can betray you based on your foreskin and two letters in your name means the difference between life and death! A few months later Montand was picked-up and was scheduled to be deported to Germany to work as a slave laborer. His sister went to every official and managed by sheer luck to find a sympathetic official. Again the Levy/Livi question came up and she spent a long time relating the family history. She managed to win his release. Finally, in February 1944, after another Vichy slave labor raid, Montand took his manager’s advice and fled to Paris. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Montand’s appearances on the Paris stage were well received. In August 1945 he met the legendary singer Edith Piaf . They became lovers and Montand’s career was given an extra boost by the publicity and her contacts. Hollywood came knocking in 1947, but Montand’s work visa was held up by his Communist background and the contract fell through. Montand’s career in France, however, continued to advance. He became a star of the French cinema. In the middle 1950’s he married Simone Signoret, already a famous actress. She was born Simone Kaminker, to a wealthy, very assimilated Jewish father and non-Jewish mother. (Her father spent the war in London.) In 1959, Montand made his first visit to the United States and toured his stage act to great acclaim. He made his first American film, “Let’s Make Love”, with Marilyn Monroe. He had a brief affair with Monroe which almost broke up his marriage. To complicate matters, Monroe was married to Arthur Miller and Montand knew Miller. He had starred in the first French production of Miller’s play “The Crucible”. Montand remained associated with the Communist Party until 1968. He had listened with dismay as Soviet Premier Khruschev personally related the horrors of Stalinism when they dined together in Moscow in 1956. But his loyalty to his father and his brother and a sentimental attachment to the Party stopped him from speaking out. The invasion of Czechoslovakia precipitated his first public break with the Party. In 1970, Montand starred in “The Conformist”. The film tells the story of Artur London, a Czech Jewish communist who survived Nazi concentration camps. He joined the Czech government after the War. At Stalin’s orders, most of the Czech Communist Party leadership was purged and many leading members executed. London, like most leading Czech Jewish communists, was purged after a “confession” was tortured out of him. In the mid-1970’s, Montand formed a committee to aid Eastern European dissidents. In the early 1980’s, he was appalled at the French (Socialist) government’s tepid response to the crushing of the Solidarity movement in Poland. His public statements and organizational efforts forced the government to take a more principled stance. Montand became a regular fixture on French television where he denounced the intellectual hypocrisy that allowed many French left intellectuals to continue to offer apologies for the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes.  Montand visited Israel in 1959, 1986, and 1988. Concerning the 1986 trip his autobiography states: “Toward Jews, Montand felt he owed an unredeemable debt: for not having shared their sufferings, for not having reacted through ignorance or thoughtlessness, at sight of the yellow star during the war. He believed firmly in a remark by the philosopher Etiemble: “The moment anyone touches a hair or the honor of a Jew, my life and freedom as a goy are threatened”.  In 1986, Montand visited Israel as the personal guest of Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He returned two years later to participate in the country’s 40th anniversary celebrations. He stood before Masada, where Jews had killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans, and read a poem that ended “Never Again, Never Again”. Simone Signoret died in 1985 and Montand in 1991. Montand did some of his best work in the 1980’s, especially the Claude Berri directed films “ Jean De Florette” and its sequel, “Manon of the Spring”.  It is quite a tale. Montand was not Jewish. But the 2nd Avenue Deli did not make a mistake when they put his picture up.  Nate Jewhoo! Editor Additional Information If you have any additional questions, please contact: editor@jewhoo.com.