French aircraft industrialist, aviator known as an outstanding pilot.
After graduating from the lycée Condorcet, Breguet School, and Supaéro, he invented a type of aircraft propeller used by the French army during World War I and founded the Société des Avions Marcel Bloch aircraft company. Following the nationalization of his company in 1936, under the Front Populaire, he stayed as a director. In 1919, he married Madeline Minckes, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family of furniture dealers. They had two sons, Claude and Serge.
Being of Jewish heritage and after refusing collaboration with the German aviation industry, he was deported to Buchenwald during World War II, while his wife was interned near Paris. He changed his name from Bloch to Bloch-Dassault and, in 1949, to simply Dassault. Dassault was the codename used by his brother, General Darius Paul Bloch, when he served in the French resistance, and is derived from char d’assaut, French for “battle tank”. Marcel Dassault converted to Roman Catholicism in 1950. After the war, he built the foremost military aircraft manufacturer in France, Avions Marcel Dassault. The firm is now the Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault, whose CEO was Serge Dassault, Marcel’s son.
Died of a heart attack on 18 April 1986, 3:00 AM, Neuilly Sur Seine, France.
Link to Wikipedia biography