He Was An Outspoken Supporter Of The Hungarian Uprising Against The Soviet Empire, in 1956: "Hungary Conquered And In Chains Has Done More For Freedom and Justice Than Any People For 20 Years."
While I certainly would not put it past the KGB, it does seem to be a bit of a stretch. If Camus had planned to travel by train, why would the KGB tinker with the car? Supposing they had listening devices at Gallimard's Provence home, would they have had time after learning of the change in travel plans to tinker with the car? Or was Gallimard an accomplice who thought the plan would unfold differently? Typically, especially 75 years ago, publishers were very close to their writers and very protective. While I find, and always have found, Camus' death tragic, I am just not seeing the strength of this theory. It unwittingly relies on Vichy France and all the crypto Communist sympathies cultivated in that region in particular. Those threads are quite real, and deeply confusing to follow, especially within the French Resistance. Algeria is, in 1960, far more relevant, particularly with Camus.
Its easy if you assume Gallimard was a participant in the plot. Gallimard convinced Camus to go by car but obviously he didn't know that it would crash. Gallimard could have been told there was some reason to take the car, like taking some detour farther en route, and the car tinkerers knew they would never get that far.
To participate Gallimard might have been blackmailed or threatened, by experts.
As a former actuary, I would say that it is extremely unlikely that the KGB caused his death. The car was not his but belonged to his publisher Michel Gallimard. Even if the KGB rigged the tire with a tool, they could not have known that Camus would be in the car at the moment when the tool pierced the tire. Moreover, they could not have predicted that the car would hit a tree.
As far as I understand it pierced the axle, not the tire. If rigged right before a long trip the chances of it happening during that trip would have been high. Remember, this would have been planned by experts, the same sort of people that arrange airplane crashes. The chances of serious injury or death at high speed would have been great, with or without the tree. They might have even arranged contingencies at the hospital if Camus had survived. Proof is different of course, but its credible.
Camus had already purchased a train ticket to Paris before accepting a ride in his friend and publisher, Michel Gallimard's car, according to the Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1961/02/the-death-of-camus/658495/ He was planning to travel by train to rejoin his family but was persuaded to ride with Gallimard. An unused train ticket was later found in Camus' pocket after the fatal car crash.
Yes but that doesn't really change the scenario. Gallimard convinced Camus at the last minute. Presumably the car was rigged after Gallimard had told the other plotters Camus agreed to go by car. If Gallimard had not been able to convince Camus then the plotters would just have made another plan for later on. Probably they knew how to rig a car like that fairly quickly.
As I said, Gallimard may have been told to convince Camus to ride in the car, but was not aware the car was rigged to crash. He could have been told to take a detour or something towards the end of the ride but the ones who rigged the car knew it would never get that far. In other words, Gallimard betrayed Camus but then was also betrayed himself. Not really very complicated.
Gallimard could have been threatened or blackmailed regardless of his ideology.
Threatened and blackmailed, an upper-class Parisian did not call his lawyer, did not go the police, but fulfilled the task and took his family with him. Too complicated for such a low success rate. Only one dead out of four people in the car.
The otter plotters? Do you think that Gallimard was a plotter and willing to sacrifice his great life and family for the reputation of the Soviet Union?
Or, you are saying that Gallimard had friends who were KGB agents, with whom he was so close that he even called them to tell them Camus was going to accompany him on the ride?
Gallimard was injured and his wife, Janine, and their 18-year-old daughter, Anne, who were also in the car, survived. So, only one person out of four in the car was killed. That is not a very high success rate for an assassination. Camus was killed because the right and front side of the car, where he was sitting, hit the tree.
Albert Camus lived with tuberculosis for 30 years, and on top of that, he was a heavy smoker. In fact, he even named his cat "Cigarette". His tragic death in the car crash, whether it was the result of an assassination attempt, an accident, or a simple twist of fate, prevented him from facing the potentially devastating long-term health consequences of tuberculosis and smoking. So we can take some comfort from that.
According to Henry Kowalski's post, "Police reports noted that Gallimard was not speeding." But we must factor in here the fact that the policemen making the reports were French. In fact, when the crash occurred, the car was traveling at 145 kph (approx. 80 mph), according to an article in The Atlantic, which is fairly speedy. We can assume this in view of the extent of the damage to the car, and because the speedometer on the dashboard was stuck at this speed after the accident. Some witnesses recalled that the car was traveling very fast and "waltzing" just before impact, according to The TLS.
Outside of urban areas, I am not sure whether there were any speed limits on French roads back in 1960.
It was mid-winter; a combination of worn tire thread and moist road surface could have done the trick at that speed, especially if wheel geometry were not up to scratch. The "waltzing" would have suggested such. It would be good to recall that in those days, cars needed frequent servicing to maintain reliability.
Yes, "thoughts are things," however in this case, I suspect it was precognition/a knowing, rather than predictive programing/ bringing it on. They are two different mental workings. When something big is about to happen to us, we often preview it during dream time. It sure looks like this was no accident, to me.
Jean Paul Sartre, as famous and as influential a left wing writer as Camus at the time, and an admirer of the Soviet Union all the way up to the death of Stalin, strongly condemned the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, viewing it as a betrayal of socialist ideals and a brutal act of oppression. He publicly denounced the intervention and criticized the French Communist Party for supporting the Soviet Union's actions.
And yet he was apparently spared by the KGB and kept on smoking, drinking, writing, pontificating, and generally not making himself healthy again until he eventually died of pulmonary edema (too much fluid in the lungs) at the age of 74 in 1980.
So I would have to ask, if the KGB did for Camus, why not do for Sartre? Perhaps they thought knocking off leading two French intellectuals would look like a job lot?
Interesting. Camus fans here should read The First Man, which is quite good for an unfinished manuscript. I'm with those here that find this theory, while intriguing, a bit far-fetched. Was Camus a legitimate threat to the Soviet Union? Was he actively organizing a powerful resistance? In my own experience, writers love to talk (and, in modern times, to tweet). But was he actually engaged in anything legitimately undermining? I would start there.
Well Celia, thank you for setting off a fire storm in my imagination with one of my favourite authors. Since 2020, I have had "The Plague" and "The Fall" in the back of my imagination. One of Camus' favourite authors was Dostoyevsky. "If there is no God, everything is permitted."
Ah, but unlike Camus, Coluche was a clear and present danger to the French deep state, even at the presidential level! There is a good biopic about him if you have not seen it.
Camus was born in Algeria when it was considered an extension of France. French leftists/communists generally sympathized with and supported Algerian FLN in kicking France out during the brutal, bloody Algerian War. FLN eventually succeeded in 1962. DeGaulle was viewed as a traitor by many for breaking his promise to keep Algeria French. L'Etranger/ The Stranger was set there.
Per Wikipedia, Camus had previously been a member of the French Communist Party before being expelled for "refusing to toe the party line."
It was news to me that he was so outspoken about the slaughter of the Hungarian students. And I come from a family that, through my father who went to Austria in '56 as a relief worker, spoke often of the Hungarian Revolution, and was asked to speak at the re-burial of Imre Nagy in '89.
Camus, long a hero of the French left then nemical to Sartre and Beauvoir, seem to have crashed in upper Provence where people still talk about the accident as of yesterday. To think the KGB would be behind it seems a bit far fetched to me, anyhow. There is another celebrital car crash in Sweden couple of years ago, which happened right after a similar crash was simulated in a specially constructed indoors machine with the celeb himself as protagonista. So, Anne, one wonders.
While this story raises questions about the tragic death of Camus, we’ll probably never know the truth about whether or not it was premeditated. But it is an intriguing thought, something he was known for, that the fate of our life (and in his case death) can be sealed by the small, oftentimes trivial decisions we make.
A female friend of mine was one night walking back to her car with a couple she knew in a not so safe part of LA. At a certain point she decided to walk the final two blocks alone, despite their offer to escort her. When she got to her car, a stranger approached her out of nowhere, pushed her into her car and what followed was attempted rape and murder. While she managed to force him out of the car, the brutal beating she took left her near death, but she managed to survive due to unbelievable fortitude as she somehow drove herself to a nearby hospital while bleeding so badly she could barely see straight.
Following the ER visit where she pulled through, she spent the next six years struggling to recover, but the physical, emotional and financial scars eventually became too much to bear (she had 14 operations). One night in 2019 she took a bunch of pills and never woke up. And all that time, she lived with the haunting reminder of the simple decision she made to walk 2 blocks by herself.
Solzhenitsyn made crystal clear that accidents 'happen' to 'relocated ' critics and dissidents ,hence the lack of over reach granted 'them' in Brussels ,usually because accidents were so habitualised 'there' .Little had changed ,except for the forthcoming sovietisation of EU ,-23,as opposed to 12 unelected oligarchs ...
In book 'Forgive Me Natasha' ,Yuri ,after swimming several miles in arctic waters -heroically , from a soviet spyship near Canadian coast ,(he had beaten Christians to death especially during baptisms in USSR ,and permanently injured several with rubberised truncheons-Natascha's prayers for him as he killed her,got him using her bible for making roll ups ,'read before burn ')..
He was rescued by coastguard , given permissions to 'relocate' ,diplomatically -
He wrote to expect a seeming suicide near Vancouver (his own) shortly after publication of his christian confession ,and own baptism .
There is no chance therefore that Camus 'could' be a target .
I endorse & approve the above ( literally from the real kilquor ) ,even though necessity recently demanded - new login from updated computer ,with a working touchscreen .
Hence k...02 .
Relegated ,on old cracked screen -to usb mouse and kbord ,realised with amount of bot stochaism posing as AI - that at least 'one' real endorsement might quell big brother memes .
While I certainly would not put it past the KGB, it does seem to be a bit of a stretch. If Camus had planned to travel by train, why would the KGB tinker with the car? Supposing they had listening devices at Gallimard's Provence home, would they have had time after learning of the change in travel plans to tinker with the car? Or was Gallimard an accomplice who thought the plan would unfold differently? Typically, especially 75 years ago, publishers were very close to their writers and very protective. While I find, and always have found, Camus' death tragic, I am just not seeing the strength of this theory. It unwittingly relies on Vichy France and all the crypto Communist sympathies cultivated in that region in particular. Those threads are quite real, and deeply confusing to follow, especially within the French Resistance. Algeria is, in 1960, far more relevant, particularly with Camus.
Its easy if you assume Gallimard was a participant in the plot. Gallimard convinced Camus to go by car but obviously he didn't know that it would crash. Gallimard could have been told there was some reason to take the car, like taking some detour farther en route, and the car tinkerers knew they would never get that far.
To participate Gallimard might have been blackmailed or threatened, by experts.
Did the KGB foresee that Camus wouldn’t use the train he had already paid for?
My thought exactly.
I do not put anything past the powers that be, but how would they know that Camus would change his plans and drive in the car?
As a former actuary, I would say that it is extremely unlikely that the KGB caused his death. The car was not his but belonged to his publisher Michel Gallimard. Even if the KGB rigged the tire with a tool, they could not have known that Camus would be in the car at the moment when the tool pierced the tire. Moreover, they could not have predicted that the car would hit a tree.
As far as I understand it pierced the axle, not the tire. If rigged right before a long trip the chances of it happening during that trip would have been high. Remember, this would have been planned by experts, the same sort of people that arrange airplane crashes. The chances of serious injury or death at high speed would have been great, with or without the tree. They might have even arranged contingencies at the hospital if Camus had survived. Proof is different of course, but its credible.
Camus had already purchased a train ticket to Paris before accepting a ride in his friend and publisher, Michel Gallimard's car, according to the Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1961/02/the-death-of-camus/658495/ He was planning to travel by train to rejoin his family but was persuaded to ride with Gallimard. An unused train ticket was later found in Camus' pocket after the fatal car crash.
Yes but that doesn't really change the scenario. Gallimard convinced Camus at the last minute. Presumably the car was rigged after Gallimard had told the other plotters Camus agreed to go by car. If Gallimard had not been able to convince Camus then the plotters would just have made another plan for later on. Probably they knew how to rig a car like that fairly quickly.
So Gallimard marched to his death with his family?
It would be different if Gallimard was a plotter and convinced Camus to take the car BY HIMSELF, no?
As I said, Gallimard may have been told to convince Camus to ride in the car, but was not aware the car was rigged to crash. He could have been told to take a detour or something towards the end of the ride but the ones who rigged the car knew it would never get that far. In other words, Gallimard betrayed Camus but then was also betrayed himself. Not really very complicated.
Gallimard could have been threatened or blackmailed regardless of his ideology.
Threatened and blackmailed, an upper-class Parisian did not call his lawyer, did not go the police, but fulfilled the task and took his family with him. Too complicated for such a low success rate. Only one dead out of four people in the car.
The otter plotters? Do you think that Gallimard was a plotter and willing to sacrifice his great life and family for the reputation of the Soviet Union?
Or, you are saying that Gallimard had friends who were KGB agents, with whom he was so close that he even called them to tell them Camus was going to accompany him on the ride?
Gallimard was injured and his wife, Janine, and their 18-year-old daughter, Anne, who were also in the car, survived. So, only one person out of four in the car was killed. That is not a very high success rate for an assassination. Camus was killed because the right and front side of the car, where he was sitting, hit the tree.
see https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/fate-of-a-dissident-writer-did-the/comment/119769660
Credible. Maybe the KGB did it for their ultimate masters, the one global mafia, the Rothschild syndicate and their Rockefeller front.
"With rebellion, awareness is born.". -Albert Camus
Albert Camus lived with tuberculosis for 30 years, and on top of that, he was a heavy smoker. In fact, he even named his cat "Cigarette". His tragic death in the car crash, whether it was the result of an assassination attempt, an accident, or a simple twist of fate, prevented him from facing the potentially devastating long-term health consequences of tuberculosis and smoking. So we can take some comfort from that.
According to Henry Kowalski's post, "Police reports noted that Gallimard was not speeding." But we must factor in here the fact that the policemen making the reports were French. In fact, when the crash occurred, the car was traveling at 145 kph (approx. 80 mph), according to an article in The Atlantic, which is fairly speedy. We can assume this in view of the extent of the damage to the car, and because the speedometer on the dashboard was stuck at this speed after the accident. Some witnesses recalled that the car was traveling very fast and "waltzing" just before impact, according to The TLS.
Outside of urban areas, I am not sure whether there were any speed limits on French roads back in 1960.
If they were travelling at a rate of 80 miler per hour anything could have caused the crash.
An animal running across the road.
It was mid-winter; a combination of worn tire thread and moist road surface could have done the trick at that speed, especially if wheel geometry were not up to scratch. The "waltzing" would have suggested such. It would be good to recall that in those days, cars needed frequent servicing to maintain reliability.
Camus wrote and I paraphrase. It is easier to know how to be a saint ,much harder to know how to be a man.
Interesting.
Camus meditated on dying in a car crash. It's not coincidental.
When bad things happen, people often say, "I knew that was going to happen."
They called it in. Our thoughts are powerful. We create our tomorrows with thoughts we think and words we speak today.
Yes, "thoughts are things," however in this case, I suspect it was precognition/a knowing, rather than predictive programing/ bringing it on. They are two different mental workings. When something big is about to happen to us, we often preview it during dream time. It sure looks like this was no accident, to me.
Interesting?
Jean Paul Sartre, as famous and as influential a left wing writer as Camus at the time, and an admirer of the Soviet Union all the way up to the death of Stalin, strongly condemned the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, viewing it as a betrayal of socialist ideals and a brutal act of oppression. He publicly denounced the intervention and criticized the French Communist Party for supporting the Soviet Union's actions.
And yet he was apparently spared by the KGB and kept on smoking, drinking, writing, pontificating, and generally not making himself healthy again until he eventually died of pulmonary edema (too much fluid in the lungs) at the age of 74 in 1980.
So I would have to ask, if the KGB did for Camus, why not do for Sartre? Perhaps they thought knocking off leading two French intellectuals would look like a job lot?
Interesting. Camus fans here should read The First Man, which is quite good for an unfinished manuscript. I'm with those here that find this theory, while intriguing, a bit far-fetched. Was Camus a legitimate threat to the Soviet Union? Was he actively organizing a powerful resistance? In my own experience, writers love to talk (and, in modern times, to tweet). But was he actually engaged in anything legitimately undermining? I would start there.
Well Celia, thank you for setting off a fire storm in my imagination with one of my favourite authors. Since 2020, I have had "The Plague" and "The Fall" in the back of my imagination. One of Camus' favourite authors was Dostoyevsky. "If there is no God, everything is permitted."
mysterious crashes are a thing in france
https://brigittebouzonnie.substack.com/p/la-mort-mysterieuse-de-coluche
Ah, but unlike Camus, Coluche was a clear and present danger to the French deep state, even at the presidential level! There is a good biopic about him if you have not seen it.
Camus was born in Algeria when it was considered an extension of France. French leftists/communists generally sympathized with and supported Algerian FLN in kicking France out during the brutal, bloody Algerian War. FLN eventually succeeded in 1962. DeGaulle was viewed as a traitor by many for breaking his promise to keep Algeria French. L'Etranger/ The Stranger was set there.
Per Wikipedia, Camus had previously been a member of the French Communist Party before being expelled for "refusing to toe the party line."
It was news to me that he was so outspoken about the slaughter of the Hungarian students. And I come from a family that, through my father who went to Austria in '56 as a relief worker, spoke often of the Hungarian Revolution, and was asked to speak at the re-burial of Imre Nagy in '89.
Holy cow.
CORRECTION: Joined the French Communist Party, left, joined the Algerian Communist Party, was expelled.
Camus, long a hero of the French left then nemical to Sartre and Beauvoir, seem to have crashed in upper Provence where people still talk about the accident as of yesterday. To think the KGB would be behind it seems a bit far fetched to me, anyhow. There is another celebrital car crash in Sweden couple of years ago, which happened right after a similar crash was simulated in a specially constructed indoors machine with the celeb himself as protagonista. So, Anne, one wonders.
While this story raises questions about the tragic death of Camus, we’ll probably never know the truth about whether or not it was premeditated. But it is an intriguing thought, something he was known for, that the fate of our life (and in his case death) can be sealed by the small, oftentimes trivial decisions we make.
A female friend of mine was one night walking back to her car with a couple she knew in a not so safe part of LA. At a certain point she decided to walk the final two blocks alone, despite their offer to escort her. When she got to her car, a stranger approached her out of nowhere, pushed her into her car and what followed was attempted rape and murder. While she managed to force him out of the car, the brutal beating she took left her near death, but she managed to survive due to unbelievable fortitude as she somehow drove herself to a nearby hospital while bleeding so badly she could barely see straight.
Following the ER visit where she pulled through, she spent the next six years struggling to recover, but the physical, emotional and financial scars eventually became too much to bear (she had 14 operations). One night in 2019 she took a bunch of pills and never woke up. And all that time, she lived with the haunting reminder of the simple decision she made to walk 2 blocks by herself.
Solzhenitsyn made crystal clear that accidents 'happen' to 'relocated ' critics and dissidents ,hence the lack of over reach granted 'them' in Brussels ,usually because accidents were so habitualised 'there' .Little had changed ,except for the forthcoming sovietisation of EU ,-23,as opposed to 12 unelected oligarchs ...
In book 'Forgive Me Natasha' ,Yuri ,after swimming several miles in arctic waters -heroically , from a soviet spyship near Canadian coast ,(he had beaten Christians to death especially during baptisms in USSR ,and permanently injured several with rubberised truncheons-Natascha's prayers for him as he killed her,got him using her bible for making roll ups ,'read before burn ')..
He was rescued by coastguard , given permissions to 'relocate' ,diplomatically -
He wrote to expect a seeming suicide near Vancouver (his own) shortly after publication of his christian confession ,and own baptism .
There is no chance therefore that Camus 'could' be a target .
It was a certainty .
I endorse & approve the above ( literally from the real kilquor ) ,even though necessity recently demanded - new login from updated computer ,with a working touchscreen .
Hence k...02 .
Relegated ,on old cracked screen -to usb mouse and kbord ,realised with amount of bot stochaism posing as AI - that at least 'one' real endorsement might quell big brother memes .
Sovietism merely grandfather of such thoughts .
Shoving the car off the road and into the tree with a powerful and heavier vehicle would have worked better.