A police dossier on Joseph Joanovici might read something like this:
"Born in 1905 in Kishinev in the Balkans, the son of Isaac and Zelta Haia, who were killed later that year in a pogrom. Aliases: Juanesky, Jouanneau, Joinov, Innovici, Joinou, Joseph Levy. Employment: ragpicker, scrap metal dealer, entrepreneur, double agent. Has been a citizen of Rumania and the Soviet Union, but now claims to be a stateless person. Wanted for swindling, nonpayment of taxes, contempt of court, illegal exit. Physical description: short, pudgy, grey-haired, looks vaguely like Alfred Hitchcock."
Mile-Long Queues. In 1927 Joseph Joanovici emerged from the obscurity of the Balkans to settle down in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. In twelve years he progressed from a ragpicker's cart to become a millionaire and one of France's top scrap metal dealers. At the outbreak of World War II, 34-year-old Joanovici tried to enlist in the French army. Turned down because he was still a Rumanian national, he sent his personal check for $3,000 to War Minister Edouard Daladier to help the war effort.
When the Nazis marched into Paris, Joanovici sought to avoid the concentration camps by taking out Soviet citizenship papers (the Nazi-Soviet pact was not yet broken). Taunted later for this, Joanovici snapped: "So, is it a crime? There were queues a mile long outside the Russian embassy."
When Germany attacked Russia in 1941, nimble Joanovici became a Rumanian again by the simple process of buying back his papers from a Vichy French passport official. Later he declared himself a stateless person. Soon the Nazis were knocking at his door, not to arrest him, but to beg humbly for his help. Germany was short of scrap, and Joanovici could supply it.
"How could I refuse?" he asked rhetorically. "If I had said no, the Germans would just have taken it for nothing." So Joseph said yes and, as the chief German scrap agent in France, made a fortune variously estimated from $16 million to $84 million. Once, because of a delivery of defective copper scrap, he was thrown into prison for a few months, but he bribed his guards, and his cell was well stocked with foie gras and smoked salmon.
Aryan Businessman. The Nazis let him out again and, back in his old job, Joseph Joanovici became "a state within a state." His payroll included Vichy officials, Gestapo agents, profiteers, speculators, fences, gangsters. He once explained the niceties of his profession: "I had lunch with the Vichy official whose job it was to see that all businesses were run by Aryans. He noticed I spoke with an accent and asked me where I was born. I told him I would like to give him money regularly, as a contribution to the Red Cross."