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

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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

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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

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  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