Joseph Rytmann
Joseph Rytmann · Arts & Literature
Exploitant de salles de cinéma, surnommé l'empereur de Montparnasse, spolié sous l'Occupation puis rebâtisseur de ses salles
26 janvier 1903, Borissov, Empire russe — 12 décembre 1983, Créteil, France
Paris, France
Joseph Rytmann is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Exploitant de salles de cinéma, surnommé l'empereur de Montparnasse, spolié sous l'Occupation puis rebâtisseur de ses salles
Origins and early life
Joseph Rytmann was born at Borissov, in the Russian Empire, on 26 January 1903, and died at Créteil on 12 December 1983.
Work and career
He, his sister Anna and their parents Benjamin and Rebecca fled the pogroms that were then striking the shtetls of the Russian Empire, and the family settled in Paris in 1907. He worked first in timber and in textile shops before turning to the cinema. In 1933 he took over the Montrouge-Palace at Petit-Montrouge and renamed it the Mistral, and in 1934 he opened the Miramar at Montparnasse. Under the German occupation he was dispossessed of his cinemas as a Jew, under the laws that stripped Jews of their businesses.
He recovered them after the war and went on to open the Bretagne, the Bienvenüe-Montparnasse and the Montparnos, until he was known as the emperor of Montparnasse. The screens he built gave that quarter of Paris the cinema life it still has, and the story of their seizure and return is one of the clearest small records of what the Occupation took and what was rebuilt afterwards.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rytmann
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Exploitant de salles de cinéma, surnommé l'empereur de Montparnasse, spolié sous l'Occupation puis rebâtisseur de ses salles
Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rytmann
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