Bernard Natan
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Bernard Natan (1886-1942) (born Natan Tannenzaft) was a Romanian Jew who moved to France after World War I and became a French citizen (in 1921), changing his name to the less Jewish-sounding Bernard Natan in the process. In France, Natan became an early pioneer of pornographic movies as a film producer (at the same time he worked as a publicity stringer for Paramount Pictures).
In 1928, Natan bought out the movie company Pathé-Cinema and renamed it Pathé-Natan. Pathé-Natan went bankrupt in 1935 and in September 1936, Natan was arrested for fraud and imprisoned. After the defeat of France by Nazi Germany in World War II in 1940, he was sent east to the concentration camps, where he died a victim of the Holocaust in 1942.
Contemporary anti-Semitic commentators preferred to use Natan's birthname "Tannenzaft" to underline his Jewishness.
