The great sagas of industry. Labonal, in Dambach-la-Ville: the ups and downs of a sock factory created by a Russian industrialist

It's a large building on the edge of the village. Inside, a company that has been a fixture of Dambach-la-Ville's landscape since 1924: Labonal, or formerly La Bonnal, a contraction of "La Bonneterie alsacienne." CEO Dominique Malfait, who has been with the company for 40 years, welcomes us at a table carefully arranged with sock designs dating back to 1938, still in vibrant colors and in keeping with the fashion of the time.

"The glorious era is behind us," he sighs nostalgically but without resignation. The boss has preserved all traces of his predecessors and speaks fondly of the most distant of them: Salomon Lipovsky.

This Jewish industrialist, originally from Kharkiv (now in Ukraine), born a subject of the Russian Empire in 1878, maintained prosperous activities there: mining industry, department store...

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