Alain Jakubowicz

Origins and early life

Alain Jakubowicz was born at Villeurbanne, near Lyon, on 2 May 1953, to Jewish parents who had reached France in 1933 from Poland and Austria.

Work and career

He was admitted to the bar in 1976 and built a Lyon practice covering business law, press law and, above all, the memory of the Holocaust. He appeared for families of deportees in the trials of Klaus Barbie, Paul Touvier and Maurice Papon, the three great French proceedings on crimes against humanity, cases in which the children of survivors finally heard the facts established in open court. He was deputy mayor of Lyon with responsibility for human rights from 1989 to 1995.

From 31 January 2010 to 6 November 2017 he was president of the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l'antisemitisme, the LICRA, founded in 1927, and in that office he made the struggle against antisemitism and against Holocaust denial the centre of his public work. He describes himself as a Jew without God, attends an orthodox synagogue and feels close to liberal Judaism. He was made a knight of the Ordre national du Merite in 2002 and an officer of the Legion of Honour in 2019.