Left-wing intellectual, activist, then bandit… Pierre Goldman had a life worthy of that of a film character.
Writer, intellectual, bandit, burglar, journalist… Pierre Goldman has had a thousand lives. Born on June 22, 1944 in Lyon, to Polish parents from Jewish families who immigrated to France, he is the brother of another well-known French personality, the singer Jean-Jacques Goldman, whom he is seven years his senior. When his parents separated, Pierre Goldman stayed in Lyon, with his father, when his mother, a heroine of the resistance, returned to live in Poland. As a teenager, he joined the Youth Communists in 1959, was expelled from high schools, then studied at the Sorbonne.
As an adult, he plunged into organized crime and committed several armed robberies. Until the evening of December 19, 1969: a pharmacy on Boulevard Richard Lenoir was robbed, two pharmacists were killed. Pierre Goldman, recognized by witnesses, was arrested on April 8, 1970 on rue de l’Odéon, in Paris. Two highly publicized trials followed, during which Jean-Jacques Goldman’s brother could count on a popular movement, led by left-wing intellectuals like Françoise Sagan, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
After being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at the end of the first trial, Pierre Goldman was released from Fresnes prison on October 5, 1976, benefiting from a conditional release. It is precisely this trial, which had a great resonance in France in the 1970s, that Cédric Kahn’s film, The Goldman Trial, traces in theaters this Wednesday, September 27.
On September 20, 1979, Pierre Goldman was assassinated in Paris under mysterious circumstances. The identity of his killers has never been clearly established, and the murder has remained unsolved, despite a bizarre claim made by a group called “Police Honor.” Nearly 15,000 people, including many left-wing intellectual figures, attended his burial on September 27 at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. The day before, his wife, married in prison, gave birth to their son Manuel.
Despite the media coverage of the affair, Jean-Jacques Goldman, as usual, has always remained discreet about his brother. One of the rare images of the singer evoking Pierre Goldman’s affairs are those filmed at the end of his second trial, when he rejoiced at his brother’s release from prison. “We are happy (…) I know that for my father it means a lot and I believe that for everyone,” he told journalists.
