On September 27, 1979, nearly 15,000 people silently walked up the Quai de la Rapée, in Paris, towards the Père-Lachaise cemetery. In the crowd, anonymous people, but also many figures of the time. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, Costa-Gavras… All came to pay a final tribute to Pierre Goldman, half-brother of Jean-Jacques, then unknown to the general public. The far-left activist, convicted of robberies but acquitted after a long legal battle for a double murder, was assassinated in the heart of the 13th arrondissement of Paris, hit by three bullets fired at point blank range.
Forty-four years to the day after this white march, releases in theaters this Wednesday The Goldman Trial, from director Cédric Kahn. The film is not a biopic but returns to the personality of the activist through his second trial, the one which made him famous. “I have been involved in trials during my career, but I think I have never experienced a trial of such intensity,” remembers Mr. Pascal Pouillot, now retired. At the time, he was 24 years old and a student lawyer. “It was totally out of the norm, especially for Amiens! The press benches were crowded, there were a lot of personalities in the audience. I remember a summary of intelligence. Everyone was brilliant, the accused, the defense, the general counsel. »
Two murders during a robbery
To understand the affair, we have to go back to December 1969. On the evening of the 19th, it was a little after 8:30 p.m. when a man burst into a pharmacy on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. In a split second, the thug kills the owner of the pharmacy and the preparer, before the incredulous eyes of a customer. A police officer who was nearby tried to intervene. The man shoots again, wounds him with a bullet in the stomach, then flees. For a few weeks, the investigation stalled, but an anonymous denunciation mentioned a certain Pierre Goldman. According to this informant, the young man, then aged 26, was the perpetrator of four robberies in the neighborhood in December 1969. Including that of the pharmacy.
Pierre Goldman is unknown to the courts. This son of Polish Jews – figures of the Resistance during the Second World War – evolved in far-left militant circles. In the late 1960s, he traveled to Cuba or Venezuela, flirting with local guerrillas. On his return, he plunged into illegality, wanted for not having served his three days in the army. Pierre Goldman was arrested in April 1970, in the Odéon district. He easily admits to three of the four robberies but firmly denies being the author of the one at the pharmacy on rue Richard-Lenoir.
Life sentence finally overturned
The trial opened in Paris in 1974. Pierre Goldman defended himself alone. Witnesses follow one another and despite numerous inconsistencies in their accounts, the accused is sentenced to life imprisonment. In the public as well as in the press, one feeling, however, predominates: that the doubt did not benefit the accused. “Neither the testimonies, nor the evidence, nor even the details could completely convince of the guilt of Pierre Goldman,” writes the legal columnist of the World. A book will change everything. In Obscure memories of a Polish Jew born in France, the condemned man shouts, from his cell, his innocence. The work enjoyed immense success and little by little, a support committee led by Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Yves Montand, etc., was formed. Maxime Le Forestier even composes for himself A man’s lifein 1975.
Yes, but at the time there was no possibility of appealing. Goldman therefore turned to the Court of Cassation which – extremely rare – annulled the trial in 1975. The reason was unpublished: the minutes of the proceedings had not been signed. Back to square one. A new trial must therefore be held, and the legislation requires that the accused be tried by another court. It will therefore be Amiens.
“He knew how to captivate the audience”
The line of defense is the same as during the first trial: to demonstrate that the investigation was biased and that the accused made an ideal culprit. This time, Pierre Goldman surrounds himself with a trio of lawyers including the tenor Georges Kiejman. “He was not yet very well known but he knew how to captivate the public. He was both very technical and very accessible,” recalls Pascal Pouillot. And to cite this day – “the strongest of the week”, in his eyes – when the council arrived with a huge photo of Pierre Goldman. The photo was taken while he was in police custody, during an investigation (when witnesses must recognize the one they believe to be the perpetrator among seven or eight people). “Usually, it is police officers who participate. Pierre Goldman had bad hair, unshaven, almost looked like a tramp, while everyone else looked good. » Georges Kiejman thus seeks to show that if some claim to have recognized him, it is because the police did everything to direct their testimony.
Of Pierre Goldman, Pascal Pouillot especially keeps the memory of a man who was both withdrawn and anxious, but capable of “exploding”. “He lost his temper several times against the lawyer for the civil parties, whom he called a fascist,” he remembers. Although his lawyers are careful not to politicize the trial, he constantly repeats that he is a victim of police anti-Semitism. Georges Kiejman sometimes struggles to hide his annoyance during his client’s tirades. But the result is there. After a relatively short deliberation, the activist was acquitted. “There was a huge clamor in the room, a lot of emotion. Ultimately, the one who was furthest behind was Goldman,” continues Pascal Pouillot. He was nevertheless convicted for the three other robberies. Between the sentence reductions and good behavior, he was released six months after the verdict.
Cases never solved
The murder of the two pharmacists has never been solved. In 1977, when the affair was now behind him, Pierre Goldman published a short novel which reignited the situation. In The ordinary misadventure of Archibald Rapoport, the hero – a Jew studying philosophy (like him) – executes four police officers, two magistrates and a lawyer, whose portrait is reminiscent of Georges Kiejman. “It’s a close call for him not to boast of having committed what he was acquitted of,” deplores the judicial chronicler of the World.
“Pierre, it’s a mystery,” summed up Jean-Jacques Goldman, seven years his junior, in an interview with France 3 years later. This is the only time in his career where the singer has mentioned his elder brother. The investigation into the assassination of Pierre Goldman was unsuccessful. This was claimed by a group calling itself “Honour of the Police” but Georges Kiejman, who died last May, always claimed to have never believed in the theory of police revenge.