Connaitre ses droits

Coco Chanel was anti-Semitic and spying for the Nazis

Written by Administrator Thursday, 18 August 2011 05:29

A new book suggests that Coco Chanel, an icon of French haute couture, was anti-Semitic and spying for the Nazis. "Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret Wars" book of the American historian Hal Vaughan just released in the United States, argues that the designer was recruited in 1940 by the Abwehr, German military intelligence that led missions during the Second World War.

Result of more than four years of work, according to its author 84 years old, the book, published Tuesday by Knopf, is partly based on documents from archives in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States.

In a statement, Chanel wanted to clarify "not being able to play for now" this new book about Gabrielle Chanel, whose life has inspired, she says, 57 works. "We invite you to visit the most serious of them," she said, still responding to extracts published in the press.

Concerning the "supposed anti-Semitism" of Coco Chanel, and she said that "we can not let them say that." "Would she have agreed to establish relations with the family owner or would she have had friends of Jewish origin among his close friends and relations (...) if it had actually taken this position? Probably not .. ., "she said.

"What is certain is that she had an affair with a German aristocrat," the Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, 12 years younger, "during the war," notes the press release. "Moreover, it seems that Chanel is close to" Winston Churchill-British prime minister during the war, "to act as intermediary between the Allies and the Germans in the context of a peace agreement ..." But "what has happened exactly what role she wanted to play? Versions differ on this point and there is an element of mystery," said the House of Chanel.

About the relationship between the designer and Wertheimer, Jewish Family owns the perfume company Chanel, Chanel acknowledges that they "knew the ups and downs." "A woman of character," Gabrielle Chanel "had never completely resigned to having assigned its rights to manufacture and sell what she saw as 'his' perfume."

When "the opportunity to take advantage of a law allowing it to resume its perfumes, 'his work', presented itself, it has seized and has also failed," the statement said, indicating that n has "not marred his relationship with the owner's family, since he will transfer his fashion house in 50 years."

The documents on which Hal Vaughan worked have only recently been declassified, according to the historian, adding that "many people in this world do not want" the character of Coco Chanel, "one of the biggest cultural icons of France "or" destroyed ".

Born in Saumur in 1883, Gabrielle Chasnel, aka Coco Chanel died in Paris in 1971.