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Is This Story Real?

JL;DR SUMMARY Matthew Fishbane explores the intriguing life of Monsieur Serge, known to his colleagues at Brasserie Lipp in Paris as a charming waiter with a mysterious past. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

HolocaustMemoirHungaryParisJewish SurvivalFrench ResistanceMonsieur SergeImré KovácsBrasserie LippWartime Espionage

Places mentioned

Paris, Île-de-France, France
"It is evening at the Brasserie Lipp, on the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris."
Makó, Csongrád, Hungary
"Some of his co-workers in 1960s Paris gathered he was a Hungarian Jew named Imr Kovcs, born in 1926 in Mak, a small town not far from the Romanian border."
Orosháza, Bács-Kiskun, Hungary
"Serge flew to Budapest, and then made his way to Oroshza, where his father had decided to spend his last years."
Budapest, Hungary
"Had anyone broken through Monsieur Serges defenses, though, they would have heard an amazing tale about infiltrating the 26th Waffen-SS, the 2nd Hungarian Division of the German elite fighting force."
Auxerre, Yonne, France
"For some 14 years after that, Kovcs floated in retirement, living for a few years in the Parisian suburb of Vanves before heading further south to join a former waiter from Lipp in Auxerre, in Burgundy."
Morocco
"A Moroccan nationalist was lured here to be disappeared."
Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
"On the 28-day passage to Saigon, Kovcs is discovered by a co-conspirator, an officer also engaged in the anti-Nazi cause."

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Retrieved 2026-06-16 05:31:45 UTC
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