George Destrem was born on 11 February 1884 in Kaluga, Russia. His parents Maurice and Alexandra de Somoff. He was an art dealer based in Paris who worked with Roger Dequoy, manager of the Wildenstein gallery in Paris. He and Dequoy maintained, in separate letters to Karl Haberstock, that they could get information on the Schloss collection with a view to acquiring parts of all of it.