Witches’ Sabbath

Born Maurice Ettinghausen in Paris, the decadent writer Maurice Sachs grew up in a wildly dysfunctional family of well-to-do unobservant Jews. Louche, dissolute, and untrustworthy, he associated with the leading homosexual writers of the interwar period, including Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and André Gide. He was converted to Catholicism by Jacques and Raïssa Maritain in 1925 and even studied for the priesthood for a while, but he did not remain a practicing Catholic for long. During the German occupation of Paris, he engaged in various dubious business activities and possibly acted as a Gestapo informer. He was deported to Germany and died there in 1945. His autobiography, Witches’ Sabbath, was written in 1939 but published only in 1946.