Albert Jolis

Albert Jolis (1912–2000) was an American diamond dealer, head of the international firm Diamond Distributors, Inc, and a fund-raising anti-communist, serving in the 1980s as board chairman of Resistance International.

World War II and its aftermath

Jolis served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) with William Casey under Bill Donovan during World War II.

In a letter to Arthur Koestler on 19 March 1946 George Orwell wrote that "Bert Jolis is very much of our way of thinking”.[1] They were planning to set up an anti-totalitarian League and Orwell had been talking to an American acquaintance about the sister organisation in the USA, the International Rescue Committee.[2]

Implementing the Reagan Doctrine

After retiring from business, Jolis helped to create the anti-communist Resistance International (1983–1988) and the National Council to Support the Democracy Movements with Soviet dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Maximov and Eduard Kuznetsov,[3] and, among others, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Martin Colman, Jack Kemp, Richard Perle, and Midge Decter.

References
  1. George Orwell, Collected Works in 20 volumes, edited by Peter Davison.
  2. Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA, M.E. Sharpe, 1995.
  3. Galina Akkerman, "Vladimir Maximov" Kontinent quarterly, 2010, (in Russian).
  • Edward Jay Epstein, The Rise and Fall of Diamonds: The Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion. Simon and Schuster, 1982
  • Albert Jolis A Clutch of Reds and Diamonds, Columbia University Press, 1996


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