Full Name René Blum Awards Croix de Guerre Award Croix de Guerre Siblings Léon Blum | Relatives Léon Blum (brother) Nationality French Date killed September 1942 | |
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Born 13 March 1878 ( 1878-03-13 ) Paris, France Occupation opera and ballet impresario Known for Founder of the Ballet de l'Opéra at Monte Carlo Died September 1942, Oświęcim, Poland Similar Léon Blum, Dora Gerson, Kurt Gerron, Hana Brady, Jura Soyfer | ||
René Blum (13 March 1878 – September 1942) was the founder of the Ballet de l'Opéra at Monte Carlo and was the younger brother of Prime Minister Léon Blum.
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Biography
Blum was born in Paris.
At the turn of the 20th century he was an editor at the Parisian literary journal Gil Blas and a popular theatre critic.
During World War I, Blum served in the Battle of the Somme. He saved threatened artwork from Amiens Cathedral and earned the French Croix de guerre.
He became director of plays and operettas at Monte Carlo in 1924, where Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes was based. In 1931, Blum was hired by Louis II, Prince of Monaco, to create a ballet company that would continue the work and legacy of the late Diaghilev (who had died in 1929). In 1932, with the help of financier Serge Denham, Blum and Colonel W. de Basil formed the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Blum and de Basil fell out in 1934, and their Ballet Russes partnership dissolved. Blum kept ballet alive in Monte Carlo. In short order, he hired choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. After Nijinska left, Blum hired Michel Fokine. In 1937, Blum and former Ballet Russes choreographer Léonide Massine acquired financing from Julius Fleischmann, Jr.'s World Art, Inc. to create a new ballet company. In 1938, their new company was allowed to regain the name Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (although the company fled for the United States in 1939, and was thereafter mostly based in New York City).
Deportation and death
In the summer of 1940, after the German occupation of Paris, Blum returned to France to be with his family. He was arrested on 12 December 1941 in his Parisian home, among the first Jews to be arrested in Paris by the French Police. He was held in the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp, then in the Drancy internment camp. On 23 September 1942 he was shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp. While at the camps, he was known for keeping up the spirits of his fellow prisoners with tales of his life in the arts. He was killed by the Nazis at age 64 in late September 1942.