Jean Ferrat

Jean Ferrat was a French singer, songwriter, and poet who enjoyed a long if sometimes controversial career with his passionate songs of love and Leftist politics. Ferrat was born Jean Tenenbaum in Vaucresson, Hauts-de-Seine, on December 26, 1930, the last of four children. His father, a Russian Jew, was a jeweler who relocated the family to Versailles in 1935, but in 1942 he was captured by Axis forces and sent to Auschwitz, where he was executed less than a week later. Young Jean was hidden by Communist members of the French resistance and survived the war; in 1945 he dropped...