youri vladimirovitch Mandelstamm

Cousin of the poet Osip Emilievich Mandelstamm (1891-1938), he emigrated to Paris with his family in 1920 where he studied literature, history and philology at the Sorbonne. Poet, writer, journalist and film critic, he worked for several periodicals, in particular for the Revue de France. During his lifetime, he published a collection of critical articles, "Chercheurs" (Shanghai, 1938), and collections of poems, "L'île" (1930), "Loyauté" (1932) and "La troisième heure" (1935). The collection "Les années" was published posthumously (1950). A complete collection of his poems was published in 1990 in The Hague. Mandelstam's poetry is similar to the poems of V. Khodasevich. He belongs to the "Parisian note" and perpetuates the classical traditions of acmeism.

He converted to Orthodoxy to marry in October 1935, Ludmila Stravinsky, eldest daughter of the composer with whom he will have a daughter Catherine. Lyudmila Mandelstam died on November 30, 1938 from tuberculosis. While his daughter took refuge in the south of France, Yuri remained in Paris. On March 9, 1942, the police came to his home, but he visited a friend, the poet Igor Voinov, who lived two floors above. The police left a note demanding that he report to the Gestapo. On the morning of March 10, 1942, he reported to the commandant's office and was arrested as a Jew. Interned in the Drancy camp, he was deported in 1943 to Auschwitz (Iawojno) where he died on October 15 at the age of 35. Orphaned, his daughter Catherine (Kitty) Mandelstam (1937-2002) was raised in the family of her uncle, Fyodor Igorevitch Strawinsky, in Geneva.