 |
Marek HalterWriter, publicist and public figure
Country:
 France |
Content:
- Biography of Marek Halter
- Early Life
- Writing and Activism
- Contributions and Achievements
- Later Years
- Legal Convictions
Biography of Marek Halter
Marek Halter is a writer, journalist, public figure, and human rights activist. He is the President of the French University Colleges in Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University. Halter is a Franco-Jewish writer and a close friend of former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
Early Life
Marek Halter was born in 1936 in Warsaw, Poland. In 1940, his family, including his parents and sister, were forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto. They later escaped to Eastern Poland, which was under the control of the Soviet Union. During the Great Patriotic War, Halter was evacuated to Alma-Ata in 1942 and later to Kokand. In 1945, he was among a group of Soviet pioneers who presented flowers to Joseph Stalin. The family returned to Poland in 1946 but moved to France in 1950. Halter studied at the School of Fine Arts in Paris and pursued a career in painting.
Writing and Activism
In 1954, Marek Halter received the International Art Prize Dovilia and became a laureate of the Ancona Biennale. He had his first solo exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1955, where he lived for two years. Upon returning to France in 1957, Halter began publishing and became an activist for human rights, anti-racism, and anti-Semitism. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, he founded the International Committee for Peaceful Negotiations in the Middle East.
Contributions and Achievements
In 1968, Halter established the magazine "Eléments," which featured contributions from Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab authors. During the early 1970s, he organized campaigns for the release of Soviet dissidents. In 1972, he founded the Committee for the Liberation of Eduard Kuznetsov and organized international support for Soviet Jews. Halter also hosted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was exiled from the USSR, in Paris in 1974.
In 1976, Halter published his first book, "Le Fou et les rois." In 1978, he founded the Committee for the Liberation of Argentine Journalist D. Timerman. In 1981, he established "Radio-Kaboul Libre," a committee advocating for freedom of expression in Kabul. Since 1982, Halter has served as the President of the Andrei Sakharov Institute.
In 1983, he published the novel "La Mémoire d’Abraham," which became a bestseller with over 5 million copies sold worldwide. The book spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and received the Livre Inter Prize. In 1991, Halter founded the French University College at Moscow State University.
Later Years
In 1992, Marek Halter played an active role in organizing secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Paris and Oslo, as a friend of Itzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat. He also established the French University College at St. Petersburg State University. In 1994, he completed his film "Les Justes," which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 1995.
In 2003, Halter served as the Commissioner General for France's participation in the 300th anniversary celebration of Saint Petersburg. He has published around twenty books, including novels and essays, and contributes to newspapers and magazines worldwide, such as Libération, Paris Match, Die Welt, VSD, El País, The Jerusalem Post, The Forward, La Repubblica, and Expressen.
Legal Convictions
In 1993, Marek Halter was convicted by the Criminal Court of Paris for "public defamation of a racist nature" following a criminal complaint filed by the Parisian association AGRIF in 1991. The verdict was reported by the Parisian newspaper "Le Monde" on December 15, 1993.
