If he was successful as an artist, Jean-Jacques Goldman, who will celebrate his 70th birthday on October 11, has also been confronted with personal tragedies, in particular the assassination of his half-brother Pierre in 1979. A drama of which he hardly ever speaks.
Two virtuosos and the same siblings. Jean-Jacques and Pierre Goldman, seven years his senior, shared, in addition to the same father Alter Mojszet Goldman, this infallible love for words. In the book “The Goldman” (ed. Pygmalion, 2018), the journalist Ambre Bartok looked back on “the life of these” twins “, of undeniable genius, who have never ceased to defend their convictions”.
Pierre Goldman was born in 1944 in Lyon. As a teenager, he decided to join the Communist Youth and the Union of Communist Students at the Sorbonne, before joining the Venezuelan guerrillas in 1968.
A robbery that would have gone wrong
Back in France, this far-left activist and intellectual who had “neither boss nor country”, according to Ambre Bartok, saw his aura decline over time, in the image of the ideals he defended, when his half-brother Jean-Jacques came into the light as a singer and songwriter. Having branched out into banditry, Pierre Goldman was accused in 1970 of the murder of two pharmacists on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, in Paris. An act he never ceased to deny.
Sentenced to life imprisonment, Pierre Goldman wrote in prison “Obscure memories of a Polish Jew born in France”, sold more than 60,000 copies. He was supported by artists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone Signoret, and Maxime Le Forestier even composed the song “La vie d’un homme”. Acquitted in 1976, he took advantage of the life of a free man in the company of his Guadeloupe wife, Christiane Succab-Goldman, and collaborated with many newspapers.
But on September 20, 1979, not far from his home in the 13e district of the capital, he was shot dead in the street by a supposed extreme right-wing group. He was 35 years old.
If the case has never been elucidated, the assassination has been claimed: “Today September 20, 1979 at 12:30 pm, Pierre Goldman paid for his crimes. The justice of the power having once again shown its weaknesses and its laxity, we did what our duty commanded us. We are claiming this act on behalf of the Police Honor group ”. More than 15,000 people attended his funeral at Père Lachaise cemetery.