Ma Prem Hasya

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Ma Prem Hasya
Born
Françoise Wizenberg

(1937-04-04)April 4, 1937
Paris, France
DiedAugust 19, 2014(2014-08-19) (aged 77)
United States
Other names
  • Françoise Ruddy
  • Hasya-Françoise Ruddy
MovementRajneesh movement
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1956; div. 1964)​
George Meredith
​
(m. 1984)​
Children2 (with Glazer)

Ma Prem Hasya, or Françoise Ruddy or Hasya-Françoise Ruddy,[1] (née Wizenberg; 4 April 1937 – 19 August 2014) was a French-American follower of Rajneesh who served as his personal secretary (or chief of staff)[2] after Ma Anand Sheela. She is featured in archive footage in the Netflix documentary series, Wild Wild Country about Rajneesh, and is depicted in the 2022 miniseries The Offer about her then-husband Albert S. Ruddy's experience making The Godfather (1972).

Early life and family

Françoise Wizenberg was born in Paris on April 4, 1937. She is the daughter of Icek/Izak (Yitzhak) Wizenberg, a Polish industrial worker who died in a

Israeli Defense Forces. According to sources her mother told her “I didn’t save you from the Germans in order to lose you to the Arabs,” and this in turn led to the family's preparations to emigrate to North America. The family eventually settled in New York after a brief sojourn in Canada.[1]

In 1956 she married

Jewish multimillionaire from Knoxville, Tennessee, and fifteen years her senior. The marriage ended after eight years and produced two children.[2] She later married her second husband, Albert S. Ruddy, a Montreal-born Jewish film producer who won the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing The Godfather.[3][2] Françoise herself was involved in producing films, with The New York Times reporting in 1973 that she was producing an independent film adaptation of Seduction of the Minotaur by Anaïs Nin.[4]
The project was ultimately unrealized. Françoise and Albert later divorced.

Rajneesh movement

She discovered the

Osho center in Los Angeles.[1]

Death

She had Parkinson's disease for the seven years preceding her death on August 19, 2014, at the home of her daughter, Erika Glazer.[1] She is buried under the name of Francoise “Hasya” Ruddy in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles.[1]

In popular culture

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Aderet, Ofer; Shubert, Omer (2018-05-17). "'Wild, Wild Country': Meet the Holocaust Survivor and Archnemesis of Ma Anand Sheela". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 2018-06-13. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
  2. ^
    ISSN 0190-8286. Archived
    from the original on 2018-06-13. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
  3. ^ "Bhagwan's Rich Folk". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 2018-06-13. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
  4. ^ Karel Reisz Gambles on Las Vegas Archived 2022-09-24 at the Wayback Machine The New York Times. 8 April 1973
  5. ^ "25 years after Rajneeshee commune collapsed, truth spills out -- Part 1 of 5". OregonLive.com. Archived from the original on 2018-12-07. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
  6. ^ Stern, Marlow (2018-04-02). "'Wild Wild Country': Most Shocking Reveals From the Sex Cult's FBI Informant". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on 2020-07-25. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
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