Vladimir Pozner (writer)

Pozner expanded on his inherited cultural socialism to associate both in writing and politics with anti-fascist and communist groups in the inter-war period.

[1] Born in Paris, to Russian-Jewish parents in 1905, after the first failed Bolshevik revolution, his father, Solomon Pozner, was a historian and an active emancipationist.

Many of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, such as Sliozberg and Horace Ginzberg, considered themselves Russian citizens, and saw no inconsistency of approach in faithfulness to Judaism with Russian-ness of the "russkie evrei".

A career in journalism was begun as he wrote for left wing papers, Regards, Vendredi, Marianne, Messidor, and for the literary review publications, Bifur, Europe, and NRF.

He also became editor and secretary of Commune published by the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, run by Paul Vaillant-Couturier, and got to collaborate with Louis Aragon, Paul Nizan, André Malraux, Philippe Soupault, André Gide, Jean Giono, Cartier-Bresson... As Hitler came to power in Germany in the early 1930s, Pozner worked actively in the struggle to rescue refugees fleeing the Nazis, meeting the German composer Hanns Eisler, an anti-fascist refugee, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship.

The writers Anna Seghers, and Ida Liebmann, German-Russian Jewish refugees from the Nazis, were also friends who required aid in the widespread murders and mass arrests of Communists in Germany after 1933, along with the loss of citizenship of all German Jews.

He remained an adherent of the Communist party largely on Gorki's advice; the famous writer had abandoned Italy in 1928 as it became a fascist dictatorship and was welcomed back to the USSR by Stalin.

But Pozner stayed in Paris, primarily to fight fascism in Europe, and became French director of the Anti-fascist printing press, run by Alex Rado.

He took part in the International Congress of Writers in defense of culture at Paris, with Mikhail Koltsov, a severe critic of the soviet bureaucratic state, who was later executed by Stalin.

When published, The Disunited States was a huge success, received with critical acclaim: a new point of view labelled as a major piece of French literature, later made into a film.

After Franco triumphed in Spain, he continued to work for the release of republican prisoners detained without trial, turning his own memoirs into a novel in 1965, L'Espagne mon premier amour.

(Quite possibly, the State Department, notoriously stingy with visas for Europeans fleeing Nazi occupation, already had their eye on him for future war work.)

He worked on several films with Berthold Brecht, Jons Ivens, George Sklar, Saika Viertel (starring Greta Garbo), with whom he remained friends.

Leaving for France at the liberation in 1945 his book was released in French and English was immediately acclaimed by Dashiell Hammett, Erskine Caldwell, and Heinrich Mann.

On one occasion at least, with Ida, he welcomed his friends who were victims of McCarthyism: Joseph Losey, John Berry, Michael Wilson, he bent his mind to an energetic defense in the press of the Hollywood Ten and denounced the industry which was cowering in front of anti-Communists and put so many talented American screenwriters on the blacklist.

On his return he published Qui a tue H O Burrell?, a satire upon Pozner's own experiences of the Cold War, and the glacial foreign relations of the United States.

Posner's book, Le Lieu du Supplice, was a chronicle of the Algerian wars, and was banned by the French military as a security risk.

Some of his novels were books based on war activity and French Resistance;, his works also show his positions against fascism and nuclear weapons.

[3] A capable raconteur, in 1972 Pozner retold to his friends, including Buñuel, Chaplin, Oppenheimer, and Picasso, his mother acting as hostess, many stories over dinner.