 With his family, he returned to France in 1938 for him to complete his doctoral thesis.Caught by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he returned to Romania, but soon changed his mind and, with the help of friends, obtained travel documents which allowed him to return to France in 1942, where he remained during the rest of the war, living in Marseilles before moving with his family to Paris after its liberation.Though best known as a playwright, plays were not his first chosen medium.