Jacques Rossi

Jacques Rossi (10 October 1909, Wrocław – 30 June 2004, Paris) was a Polish-French writer and polyglot. Rossi was best known for his books on the Gulag.

Early life

He was born as Franz Xaver Heyman and was the son of architect Martin (Marcin) Heyman and Léontine Charlotte Goyet who was for a time governess in Kalisz. In 1962, in Poland, he changed his name from Franciszek Ksawiery Heyman to Jacek Franciszek Rossi, perhaps in recognition of his real father's name.

Political associations

He was a member of the Communist Party of Poland as well as of the comintern. He participated in the Spanish Civil War. At one time, he worked for Leon Trotsky and interpreted for Stalin. In 1937, he was called to Moscow and, most likely due to his prior connection with Trotsky, was imprisoned in Soviet camps until after Stalin's death in 1953. In 1961 he returned to Warsaw with the help of his brother Piotr Heyman.

Career

A polyglot, he was a lecturer in the University of Warsaw School of Foreign Languages under the name Jacek Rossi. He lived in Warsaw till about 1980. In 1985 he traveled to France and was naturalized as a French citizen. In the late 1980s, he spent time as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where he wrote his memoires and an "encyclopedia on the Gulag" as he referred to it in conversation.

Publications

As Jacques Rossi he wrote about his experiences of the Gulag - The Gulag Handbook, which was originally written in Russian and was translated into French (1997), English (1987), Japanese (1996), Czech (1999), Italian (2006).

At the end of his life he recorded a series of interviews which were subsequently published as Jacques, le Français : pour mémoire du Goulag.