Albert Cohen

Abraham Albert Cohen was born in Corfu in 1895, into a family of Jews from Corfu with a long-standing presence on the island (his family was involved in soap making). In the early 20th century, his parents emigrated to Marseille due to the rising antisemitism on the island. Albert Cohen received a Catholic upbringing and, in 1904, enrolled at Thiers High School, where he became classmates with the young Marcel Pagnol. In 1914, he moved to Geneva to study law and literature. In 1919, he acquired Swiss citizenship (instead of Ottoman). Six years later, he took over the management of the "Revue juive" ("Jewish Review"), which included names like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud on its editorial board. Between 1926 and 1931, he worked at the International Labour Office in Geneva. With the outbreak of World War II, he fled to Bordeaux and then to London. On behalf of the "Jewish Agency for Palestine," he was tasked with communicating with representatives of the exiled Jewish communities. In 1944, he was appointed legal advisor to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, which drafted the International Treaty of October 15, 1946, for the Protection of Refugees. In 1947, he returned to Geneva, and a few years later (in 1957), he declined the position of Israeli ambassador to devote himself to his writing. He died in Geneva on October 17, 1981, after his work had finally begun to gain recognition: his first book was published by Gallimard, he appeared on Bernard Pivot's television show, and "Magazine Littéraire" dedicated the cover of one of its issues to him. His major works in French include: "Paroles juives" (poems, 1921), "Solal" (novel, 1930), "Mangeclous" (novel, 1938), "Le livre de ma mère" (personal memoirs, 1954), "Belle du Seigneur" (novel, Grand Prix du Roman from the French Academy, 1968), "Les valeureux" (novel set in Kefalonia, 1970), "Ô vous, frères humains" (1972), and "Carnets" (diary, 1979).