Leo Sauvage

Leo Sauvage
Born
Léopold Smotriez

(1913-02-23)February 23, 1913
Mannheim, Germany
DiedOctober 30, 1988(1988-10-30) (aged 75)
New York City, New York, U.S.
EducationUniversite de Paris
OccupationsJournalist, writer, arts critic
SpouseBarbara Suchowolska (m.)
Children3, including Pierre Sauvage
RelativesSamuel Pisar (nephew)

Leo Sauvage (né Léopold Smotriez; February 23, 1913 – October 30, 1988)[1] was a German and French journalist, writer, and arts critic.

Life and career

Leo Sauvage was born Léopold Smotriez on February 23, 1913, in Mannheim, Germany.[2][3][4] However, some citations state his place of birth as Nancy, France.[2][3] He was Jewish.[4]

Sauvage studied at the Universite de Paris. During World War II he ran a Marseilles theatre company that was eventually shut down for mocking the collaborationist Vichy regime.[5][1]

In 1948, Sauvage moved to the United States to work as a correspondent for Agence France Presse.[2] Two years later he joined Le Figaro.[5] He was a foreign correspondent for that newspaper until 1975 when he resigned to become drama critic for The New Leader.[1]

Sauvage was one of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed US president John F. Kennedy. Sauvage was skeptical of the official explanation from the beginning, having visited Dallas just days after the assassination.[5] He found himself unimpressed by how the Dallas PD conducted its investigation.[2] In March 1964 he published an article in Commentary posing a series of questions that, in his view, Oswald's accusers must be forced to answer.[6] In 1966 his book The Oswald Affair was among a wave of books that year to undermine public confidence in the Warren Report.[7][8] He penned the introduction to Accessories After the Fact (1967) by fellow Warren Commission critic Sylvia Meagher.[9] In 1976 he was interviewed for the French documentary "Le Mystere Kennedy" (trans. "The Kennedy Mystery").[10]

In 1973 he published Che Guevara: The Failure of a Revolutionary, a critical biography of Che.[11] His book Les Américans (1983), an examination of American culture, became a bestseller in France.[1][12]

In 1988 Leo Sauvage died of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment. He was 75. He was survived by his wife Barbara Suchowolska, and their three children.[5] His nephew-in-law was Samuel Pisar.[13]

Sauvage was paid tribute to by the French minister for culture, Jack Lang, who sent a telegram to Sauvage's eldest son Pierre, remarking that he was "a man of talent and courage, he embodied the honor of great journalism".[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Leo Sauvage, 75, Journalist, Dies". The New York Times. 5 November 1988.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Leo Sauvage, veteran French newsman in New York, dies at 75". UPI News. 4 November 1988.
  3. ^ a b "Léo Sauvage". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 3 February 2026.
  4. ^ a b Unsworth, Richard P. (2012). A Portrait of Pacifists: Le Chambon, the Holocaust, and the lives of André and Magda Trocmé. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-5182-6. His father was a Jewish journalist and theater director who had early on seen the benefits of a non-Jewish pseudonym (his real name was Léopold Smotriez). When the Nazis took over Paris, he and his Polish Jewish wife, Barbara, had fled to Marseilles and Free France because they were Jews and the Nazi repression had already begun. When Marseilles was no longer a safe place, they looked for a small town where there might be less risk of being identified as Jews and thus as candidates for deportation. Léo and Barbara took their false papers' name, Sauvage, when they arrived in a hamlet called La Fayolle, just outside
  5. ^ a b c d "Leo Sauvage, French Newsman; Wrote Book on Kennedy Probe". Los Angeles Times. 6 November 1988. Archived from the original on 6 May 2023. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  6. ^ Kelin, John (2007). Praise from a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report. San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0916727321.
  7. ^ The Oswald Affair was first published in 1965 in Paris, by Éditions de Minuit, under the title L'Affaire Oswald: Réponse au Rapport Warren.
  8. ^ Harrison Pollack, Jack (1979). Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America. Prentice Hall. p. 255. ISBN 978-0132223157.
  9. ^ Meagher, Sylvia (1967). "Introduction by Leo Sauvage". Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company. pp. viii–xvi. LCCN 67025176. Of all the books written on the Kennedy assassination, including the Warren Report, Accessories After the Fact comes closest to being the reference book on the subject.
  10. ^ Frewin, Anthony (1993). The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: An Annotated Film, TV, and Videography, 1963-1992. Greenwood Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-0313289828.
  11. ^ Kellner, Douglas (1988). Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chelsea House Publishers. pp. 63 & 106. ISBN 978-1555468354.
  12. ^ Bernheim, Nicole (8 March 1983). "" LES AMÉRICAINS ", de Léo Sauvage Un Français à New-York". Le Monde.
  13. ^ Pisar, Samuel (1980). Of Blood and Hope. Little, Brown and Company. p. 109. ISBN 978-0316709019.
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