In her own way, Régine left her mark on the world of music and the world of nightlife. Alas the icon is gone… This Sunday 1er May 2022, Daphné Rotcage – the singer’s granddaughter – confirmed her disappearance to AFP. “Régine left us peacefully on 1er May at 11 a.m., she said in a statement.
Native of Anderlecht, Régine was Jewish of Polish origin. During the Second World War, Régina Zylberberg, her real name, narrowly avoided deportation. To escape the Gestapo, the artist ends up finding refuge in an establishment for the elderly. There, Régine will meet “his first great love” named Claudius.
“He was gifted, he was 16 at the time, I was 12. He was in charge of perfecting the beginning of my studies and of course there were kisses and then after the kisses, something else … »she revealed on the show The unexpected parenthesis in 2014. “He went on June 6, 1944 to see his uncle to tell him that when I was 15, he would marry me. And coming down from his uncle’s […]they were arrested and he never came back”. A drama that will haunt her all her life…
“My priority was to set up my nightclubs…”
After the war in 1947, Régine – just 17 years old – married Paul Rotcage who wanted to become a leather goods maker. A year later, the lovebirds welcome a son named Lionel. But the couple separated three years after the wedding. “I wasn’t really in love, but as he offered me shoes and bags and I dreamed of leaving the management of my father’s bar, I got married…”, confessed the main interested party in the columns of Paris Match.“I divorced, swearing never to have the ring on my finger again. My priority was to set up my nightclubs”.
In the 1950s, the interpreter of “P’tits Papiers” saw her notoriety explode thanks to the shows she organized all over France. The entire jet-set wants to take part in its frenzied evenings! In 1960, Régine created a surprise by uniting with Roger Choukroun. But after 30 years of marriage, the duo divorced.
“He suffered a lot from having to share me…”
“Of the thirty-four years of union with my last husband, we really had to share three”, confessed Michou’s sidekick. In 2006, his 58-year-old son Lionel succumbed to lung cancer. A difficult grief to overcome for Régine. “I lost my only son twelve years ago and I will never get over it”, she confessed in 2018 to France Sunday.“He was in a lot of pain having to share me. We didn’t get along all the time, but we loved each other a lot…”.
Upset, Régine gradually regains a taste for life thanks to her granddaughter Daphné and her great-grandsons named Félix and Léo: “Leo is my new love. He is one and a half years old and can’t stop dancing, she confessed nostalgically: “It’s a detonating mixture of Irish, Scottish and Polish blood”. For the star, the family was sacred!
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