Background

Léon Poliakov was born on November 25, 1910, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to Russian Jewish family, the day after Tolstoy's death, and his parents named him after that great Russian writer. His father was a newspaper editor. The family fled to Berlin on the outbreak of the Bolshevist Revolution but, sensing early the rising tides of anti-Jewish sentiment, moved in 1924 to Paris.

Education

Poliakov attended the Lycee Janson-de-Sailly and read law at the Faculte de Droit of the University of Paris.

Career

In 1933, Leon and his father started a brave but doomed project, a newspaper for German refugees, the anti-Hitler Pariser Tageblatt. During the Second World War, they joined the Resistance. When the Poliakovs returned to Paris at the Liberation in 1945, Leon became the co-founder of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, involving the collection of all records concerning the plight of Jews during the Second World War.

After leaving the research department, Poliakov went on to serve as director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) from 1954 to 1971. He also testified in the 1987 trial of former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie.

Achievements

• Poliakov is noted for his work regarding the history of Anti-Semitism. During his career, he co-founded the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, established to collate documentation on the persecution of Jews during World War II. He also assisted Edgar Faure at the Nuremberg Trial. His multi-volume work, Histoire de l'antisémitisme (translated by Richard Howard and published as The History of Anti-Semitism), gained critical acclaim. His other works include Bréviaire de la haine: Le Ille Reich et les juifs (translated and published in the United States as Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe), Le Procès de Nuremburg, Twentieth-Century Totalitarianism, The Third Reich and the Jews, and Le Mythe aryen: Essai sur les sources du racisme et des nationalismes (translated by Edmund Howard and published as The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe).
  
  According to historian Jos Sanchez, Poliakov was the first scholar to assess the disposition of Pope Pius XII critically on various issues connected to the Holocaust.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The History of Anti-Semitism

    (Covering the story of prejudice against Jews from the tim...)

    1961
  • Moscou, troisième Rome

    (French Edition)

  • L'auberge des musiciens: Mémoires

    (French Edition)

  • Les Samaritains

    (French Edition)

  • The Aryan myth: A history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe 1996
  • The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume 2 1973
  • Jews Under the Italian Occupation 1983

Connections

During his life, Poliakov lived in Italy and Germany until he settled in France. He was married and had one son. He first was married to Natalie Polyakov but got divorced in 1937. In 1952, he married Germain Rousseau, with whom he lived until his death.

ex-wife:

Natalie Polyakov

Wife:

Germain Rousseau