SACHS, MAURICE

SACHS, MAURICE (originally Jean-Maurice Ettinghausen; 1906–1945?), French author, critic, and translator. Born in Paris, Sachs was abandoned by his parents and fell prey to alcoholism, homosexuality, and kleptomania. Vainly trying to free himself from moral depravity, he became a Catholic and entered a seminary, but left it and went to the U.S., where he married a Protestant minister's daughter. Returning to France, he became a Nazi collaborator and black marketeer. He is believed to have died in a prison fight in Hamburg toward the end of World War II. Sachs' literary talent revealed itself in novels, essays, and a number of picaresque stories. These include La Décade de l'Illusion (1950), published first in English as The Decade of Illusion (1933); André Gide (1936); and Au temps du Boeuf sur le Toit (1939). Le Sabbat (The   Day of Wrath, 1953), written in 1939 and published in 1946, is the brutal confession of a lost soul, a brilliantly written, penetrating analysis of bohemian life in Paris. Most of Sachs' works are autobiographical. Those published posthumously include La Chasse à courre (1948), Chronique joyeuse et scandaleuse (1948), Tableau des moeurs de ce temps (1951), Abracadabra (1952), and Le Voile de Véronique (1958). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Monceau, Le Dernier Sabbat de M. Sachs (1950); Catane, in: Ma'ariv (Dec. 2, 1960). (Moshe Catane)