Chapter 25

The most important people in Paris

Click here.

Old Pictures of Paris

Click here

The difficult conditions of the Russian emigration

A year and a half later, the day of the trial was finally here. It was only going to take one day and, as a Russian newspaper would later comment, ‘it was full of dramatic episodes. It once again showed the difficult material and moral conditions of the Russian emigration.’

Russian newspaper: Vozrozhdenie, Volume 8, Number 2895, 6 May 1933.

“Russian emigration” here refers not to the process of emigration, but to the community of Russian immigrants themselves.

Le Palais de Justice

Newspaper photo

Paris Soir, 6 May 1933. To the left is the Russian translator (whom Feodor didn’t use, as he spoke in French, but Mother did use the translator); to the right is Maurice Garçon.

La Santé Prison

Feodor Kamendrovsky stayed in the infamous La Santé Prison, which is still known as one of the most violent prisons in the world.

Click here for more information. Here for pictures. And here about the violence.

The guillotine was just outside (in Rue de La Santé) where the public beheadings took place. Some days he would hear the cheering from his cell…

Chapter 25

The last public beheading was in 1939 (the last public execution in England took place in 1868) of Max Bloch, a burglar and double murderer. As was the tradition, the execution took place at dawn and attracted a crowd of several hundred who came to make a party out of it – “to see a murderer’s head pop like a champagne cork”, as one put it.

Dombrovsky’s age

Feodor’s cheeks flushed. “I had no idea!” he exclaimed. “How could I suspect this? My wife was only twenty-six years old, Dombrovsky was fifty years old!” The greying président looked over his reading glasses and cleared his throat. “He was IN his fifties.(…)”

Chapter 25

It appears everyone in the media thought that Dombrovsky was fifty years old. However, he was 57 or 58 years old when he died. See here.

Sources

Both the murder and the trial were in all French newspapers those days. For further reading:

A modern online Russian article

The Trial – in 1933 (in French)