[1] Trigano was born to immigrant Sephardic Algerian Jewish parents in Montreuil[2] in 1925 and was 15 years old when the Nazis occupied the city during World War II.
The family fled to the mountains of Ariège in the south of France when his parents were tipped off by a police officer who lived in their building that their names were on a Gestapo arrest warrant.
Trigano then joined the Resistance and was involved in assisting downed Allied pilots by forging documents that allowed them to escape to nearby Spain.
[2] On 14 December 2012, Trigano sued Milan Kovac of Bratislava, Slovakia for infringing on copyright and trademark laws by registering the domain name www.andretrigano.com.
He had a collection of around 180 classic cars, which have since been sold as of September 2020, including vintage Citroens, Cadillacs, Triumphs, Rolls Royces, and an Excalibur.