Serge Gainsbourg spouse Lise Levitzky
Biography
1928–1956: Early years
Lucien Ginsburg was born in Paris on 2 April 1928. He was the son of Jewish Russian migrants, Joseph and Olga Ginsburg, who fled to Paris via Istanbul after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Joseph Ginsburg was a classically trained musician whose profession was playing the piano in cabarets and casinos; he taught his children—Gainsbourg and his twin sister Liliane—to play the piano. Gainsbourg's childhood was profoundly affected by the occupation of France by Germany during World War II. The identifying yellow star that Jews were required to wear haunted Gainsbourg; in later years he was able to transmute this memory into creative inspiration. During the occupation, the Jewish Ginsburg family was able to make their way from Paris to Limoges, travelling under false papers. Limoges was in the Zone libre under the administration of the collaborationist Vichy government and still a perilous refuge for Jews, and it became even more dangerous after Germany occupied it in 1942. Gainsburg attended the Lycée Condorcet high school in Paris but dropped out before completing his Baccalauréat.In 1945, Gainsbourg's (Ginsburg's) father enrolled him into Beaux-Arts de Paris, a prestigious art school, before he switched to the Académie de Montmartre, where his professors included the likes of André Lhote and Fernand Léger. There, Gainsbourg would meet his first wife Elisabeth "Lize" Levitsky, daughter of Russian aristocrats who was also a part-time model. They married on 3 November 1951 and were divorced by 1957.  In 1948, he was conscripted by the military for twelve months of service in Courbevoie. He never saw action and spent the time playing dirty songs on his guitar, visiting prostitutes and drinking, later admitting that the service made him an alcoholic. Gainsbourg obtained work teaching music and drawing in a school outside of Paris, in Le Mesnil-le-Roi. The school was set up under the auspices of local rabbis, for the orphaned children of murdered deportees. Here, Gainsbourg heard the accounts of Nazi persecution and genocide, stories that resonated for Gainsbourg far into the future.
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