Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon | |
---|---|
Deputy for Cher's 3rd constituency | |
In office 11 July 1968 – 6 May 1978 | |
Preceded by | Laurent Bilbeau |
Succeeded by | Berthe Fiévet |
Prefect of Police of Paris | |
In office 15 March 1958 – 18 January 1967 | |
Preceded by | André Lahillonne |
Succeeded by | Maurice Grimaud |
Mayor of Saint-Amand-Montrond | |
In office 1971–1983 | |
Preceded by | Robert Lazurick |
Succeeded by | Serge Vinçon |
Mayor of Gretz-Armainvilliers | |
In office 1955–1958 | |
Preceded by | Georges Travers |
Succeeded by | Anatole Gaucherot |
Personal details | |
Born | Deceased | 3 September 1910
Conviction(s) | Crimes against humanity |
Criminal penalty | 10 years imprisonment |
Imprisoned at | La Santé Prison |
Maurice Papon (French pronunciation:
In 1961, Maurice Papon was personally awarded the
After
In 1998, Papon was convicted of crimes against humanity. He was released from prison early, in 2002, for ill health. He died in 2007.
Early life
Papon was born in
Papon studied at the
Early career
After entering
In June 1936, during the Popular Front government, he was attached to the cabinet of Radical-Socialist François de Tessan, the vice-state secretary to the presidency of the council as well as a friend of his father. He became a member of the Ligue d'action universitaire républicaine et socialiste, a Radical-Socialist youth group; Pierre Mendès France was also a member.[2]
World War II
Mobilised on 26 August 1939 in the 2nd colonial infantry regiment, Papon was sent to
Papon was appointed as the vice-chief of bureau to the central administration of the Ministry of Interior, before he was named, in February 1941, as vice-prefect, 1st class. The next month, he became Maurice Sabatier's general secretary and general secretary of the administration for the Interior Minister. While Papon chose Vichy, 94 civil servants were dismissed at the end of the spring of 1941, 104 pensioned off and 79 moved. Now, as Le Monde put it in 2002, "neutrality is no longer an option."[1]
In May 1942, his chief, Sabatier, was named prefect of Aquitaine by Pierre Laval, the head of the Vichy government. Papon was appointed as general secretary of the prefecture of Gironde in charge of Jewish Affairs.[3]
Papon later claimed he had Gaullist tendencies during the war. A confidential report from the
During
From July 1942 to August 1944, 12 trains left Bordeaux for Drancy; about 1,600 Jews, including 130 children under 13, were deported; few survived. Papon also implemented the
Fourth Republic
Some résistants questioned his activities, but Papon avoided being judged by the
The CDL were in charge of the épuration, the
Papon became chief of staff of the commissaire de la République, a high civil servant that replaced Vichy's prefects.[2] He effectively retained the same functions as during the war. Charles de Gaulle and others "perfectly knew his past," according to Olivier Guichard.[4] De Gaulle had received him personally after the liberation of Bordeaux in September 1944.[1]
Papon was first named
In October 1945, Papon was appointed as
"the authority of the state is so sacred, the danger constituted by the communists so intolerable, that he is disposed to accept without too many problems of conscience men who may have, for a fairly long time, worked on behalf of Vichy."[4]
Papon was named prefect of Corsica in January 1947 by Léon Blum's government and, in October 1949, prefect of Constantine in Algeria by Radical Henri Queuille's government (with SFIO member Jules Moch at the Interior). He went to Morocco in 1954 as general secretary of the protectorate, where he helped repress Moroccan nationalists. He returned to Constantine in 1956 during the Algerian War (1954–1962), where he actively participated in the repression, including the use of torture against the civilian population.[5]
Prefect of Police of Paris
This section needs additional citations for verification. (September 2015) |
In March 1958, Papon was appointed
May 1958 crisis
Papon thus had an important role in the
October 1961 massacre
Papon oversaw the repression during the Paris massacre of 1961: on 17 October 1961, a large peaceful march, organised by the Algerian National Liberation Front, broke a curfew that had been "advised" by Papon because of ostensible "concerns" on the group's sponsoring of a series of bombings throughout France. The police arrested 11,000 persons, who claimed that it was simply because of their appearance.[8][9]
They were mostly people from the
Up to 200 people were killed during the events, according to a prominent historian, Jean-Luc Einaudi.[8] Because some archives have been destroyed and others remain classified, the exact number of the dead remains unknown. At the time, the French government, headed by de Gaulle, with Roger Frey as Interior Minister, admitted only two of the dead. A government inquiry in 1999 concluded 48 drownings on the one night and 142 similar deaths of Algerians in the weeks before and after, 110 of whom were found in the Seine. It also concluded the true toll was almost certainly higher. According to Le Monde, Papon "organized the silence." It was only in the 1990s that historians began to speak out.[1] The French government reluctantly recognized 48 deaths, but the Paris Archives, consulted by historian David Assouline, note 70 persons dead. Papon never acknowledged responsibility for that massacre.[citation needed]
February 1962 massacre
Papon was also in charge during the
On 8 February 2007, the Place du 8 Février 1962, a square near the metro station, was dedicated by Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, after bouquets of flowers were deposited at the foot of a commemorative plaque installed inside the metro station in which the killings occurred.[citation needed]
Ben Barka affair
Papon was forced to leave his functions after the October 1965 kidnapping, in Paris, of
De Gaulle was forced to ask for Papon's resignation in early 1967;[1] Papon's successor was Maurice Grimaud.
Company president and government minister
De Gaulle helped Papon become president of the company Sud Aviation (1967–1968). The firm, which later merged into Aérospatiale, built the first Concorde plane in 1969. During May 1968, he wrote: "Is it the return of the Occupation? The young German anarchist [Daniel] Cohn-Bendit is freely arranging the riots."[13] The new chief of the Paris police managed to take care of the situation without a single death.[citation needed]
Papon was elected deputy of Cher as candidate of the Gaullist Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR) in May 1968. He was re-elected in 1973 and again in 1978 (now for the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR). He was elected mayor of Saint-Amand-Montrond in 1971 and 1977. Papon was director of the Verreries mécaniques champenoises, a glass art firm in Reims.[14]
On the evening of 4–5 June 1977, a commando shot at workers on strike, killing CGT trade-unionist Pierre Maître and severely injuring two others. Four of the five members of the commando, members of the CGT were arrested by the police.[15] The leader of the commando and shooter, who received a 20-year sentence, and the driver were members of the Service d'Action Civique.
From 1968 to 1971, Papon was treasurer of the UDR. He became President of the Finance Commission of the
Trial, prison and release
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2018) |
Evidence of his responsibility in the
The Canard enchaîné leaks
On 6 May 1981, Le Canard enchaîné newspaper published an article, "Papon, aide de camps. Quand un ministre de Giscard faisait déporter des juifs" ("Papon, aide of camps: When one of Giscard's ministers deported the Jews"). It also made public several documents that had been signed by Papon and showed his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Jews of Bordeaux to Drancy from 1942–44.[7] The documents had been provided to the newspaper by one of the survivors of Papon's raid, Michel Slitinsky (1925–2012). Slitinsky had received them from historian Michel Bergés, who had discovered them in February 1981 in the department's archives.[16] The publication of the 6 May article occurred four days before the second round of the presidential election, opposing candidate François Mitterrand, who would win the race, and incumbent president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing under whom Papon was a cabinet minister.[citation needed]
Legal battles
Noted
Papon had begun writing his memoirs before his death; he criticised Chirac's official recognition of the involvement of the French state in the Holocaust.[18]
Charges of crimes against humanity, complicity of assassination and abuse of authority were first brought against Papon in January 1983. Three months later, Papon sued the families of the victims for defamation but eventually lost.[2] The slow investigation was cancelled in 1987 because of legal technicalities (such as a mistake by the investigating magistrate). New charges were laid in 1988, in October 1990 and in June 1992.[2] The investigation was finished in July 1995.
In December 1995, Papon was sent to the
The trial
Papon finally went to trial on 8 October 1997, after 14 years of bitter legal wrangling. The trial was the longest in French history and went on until 2 April 1998. Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, some children or elderly, between 1942 and 1944.[citation needed]
As in Adolf Eichmann's trial 30 years earlier, one of the issues of the trial was to determine to what extent an individual should be held culpable in a chain of responsibility. Papon's lawyers argued that he was a mid-level official, not the person making decisions about whom to deport. His lawyers argued that he had done the most good he could in the circumstances and had ensured that those to be deported were treated well while in his custody. The prosecution argued that the defence of following orders was not sufficient and that he bore at least some of the responsibility for the deportations. Calling on assistance from the best historians of the period, they dismantled his arguments of having tried to "humanise" the conditions of deportations of the Jews.[citation needed]
While Papon claimed that he had worked to grant humane conditions of transport to the Camp of Mérignac, historians testified that his concerns were motivated by efficiency. Although Papon claimed that he had used ordinary trains and not livestock trains, as had been used by the SNCF in numerous other transfers, the historians asserted that he was trying to prevent any demonstration of sympathy toward the Jews from the local population.[citation needed]
Leading historians of the period who testified as experts during the trial included Jean-Pierre Azéma, Henry Rousso, Maurice Rajsfus, René Rémond, Henri Amouroux and American historian Robert Paxton.[16] The defence tried to exclude Paxton's testimony by claiming the international and national context was irrelevant, but the magistrate dismissed that argument and said that "crimes against humanity" necessarily imply a larger context.[citation needed]
Paxton, an expert in Vichy history, dismissed the "preconceived ideas" according to which Vichy had "hoped to protect French Jews" by handing "foreign Jews" over to the Germans: "From the start, at the summit, it was known that their departure [of the French Jews] was unavoidable.... Italians had protected the Jews. And the French authorities complained about it to the Germans.... The French state, itself, has participated in the politics of extermination of the Jews." In his 36-minute final speech to the jury, Papon rarely evoked those killed during the Holocaust. He portrayed himself as a victim of "the saddest chapter in French legal history." He denounced a "
Verdict, appeals and escape
Having proved that Papon had organized eight "
The real Robert de La Rochefoucauld, a hero of the French Resistance who maintained that Papon had worked with the Resistance, had given Papon his passport to enable him to escape.[21] Papon's appeal, scheduled for 21 October 1999,[22] was automatically denied by the Court because of his flight.
Prison and release
France issued an international arrest warrant, and Papon was quickly apprehended by the Swiss police and extradited.[23] On 22 October 1999, Papon began serving his sentence at La Santé Prison in Paris.[24]
Papon applied for release on the grounds of poor health in March 2000, but President Jacques Chirac denied the petition three times. Papon continued to fight legal battles while he was in prison. His lawyers appealed to the
Meanwhile, Papon's lawyers pursued a separate action in France and petitioned for his release under the terms of a March 2002 law, which provided for the release of ill and elderly prisoners to receive outside medical care. His doctors affirmed that Papon, now 92 years old, was essentially incapacitated. He became the second person released under the terms of the law and left jail on 18 September 2002, less than three years into his sentence. Former Justice Minister Robert Badinter expressed support for the release, prompting indignation from relatives of the victims as well as Arno and Serge Klarsfeld.[25]
Relatives of Papon's victims and human rights
The
Later life and funeral
In March 2004, the chancery of the Legion of Honour accused Papon of illegally wearing his decoration, which had been stripped of him after his conviction, while he was being photographed for a press interview for
His attorney, Francis Vuillemin, declared that Papon should be buried with insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honour. That triggered public expressions of indignation from all French political parties except
Bernard Accoyer, head of the Union for a Popular Movement group in the French National Assembly, suggested that as the high chancellor of the Order of the Legion of Honour, Chirac might personally intervene to prevent that, but Chirac did not do so. Papon was buried, with the insignia, on 21 February 2007.[28][29][30] A son of one of Papon's victims observed of Papon, "Besides being a remorseless dead man, he also wishes to remain a vengeful one."[26]
After his death, The Irish Independent wrote in an article: 'Have no doubt Hitler would have wiped out Arabs after Jews':[31]
MAURICE Papon, lowered into his grave along with his precious Legion d'honneur last week, proved what many Arabs have long suspected but generally refuse to acknowledge: that bureaucrats and racists and others who worked for Hitler regarded all Semitic people as their enemies and that - had Hitler's armies reached the Middle East - they would ultimately have found a "final solution" to the "Arab question," just as they did for the Jews of Europe. Papon's responsibility for the 1942 arrest and deportation of 1,600 Jews in and around Bordeaux - 223 children among them, all shipped off to the Drancy camp and then to Auschwitz - was proved without the proverbial shadow of a doubt at his 1998 trial. Less clear were the exact number of Algerians murdered by his police force in Paris and hurled into the Seine in 1961.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Maurice Papon, une carrière française, Le Monde, 19 September 2002. (in French)
- ^ a b c d e Les dates clefs de la vie de Maurice Papon, Le Figaro, 12 February 2007. (in French)
- ^ "Les grandes dates de sa carrière", Le Nouvel Observateur, 17 February 2007. (in French)
- ^ a b Éric Roussel, Charles de Gaulle, éd. Gallimard, 2002, p. 460 (in French)
- ^ Raphaëlle Branche, THE FRENCH ARMY AND TORTURE DURING THE ALGERIAN WAR (1954–1962) Archived 2007-10-20 at the Wayback Machine, mfo.ac.uk (2004); accessed 1 September 2015. (in English)
- ^ See, in particular, Eric Roussel, Charles de Gaulle, op. cit., pp. 598–99
- ^ a b The important dates of the Papon Affair, Le Figaro, 17 February 2007. (in French)
- ^ ISBN 2-02-013547-7
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4711-2930-8.
- ^ "Charonne, passé au scalpel de l'historien (interview with historian Alain Dewerpe, member of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales)". L'Humanité. 6 February 2006.
- ^ "Charonne et le 17 octobre enfin réunis". L'Humanité. 11 February 2006.
- Gallimard, 2006.
- ^ French "Est-ce le retour de l'Occupation ?", ose-t-il demander. Le jeune anarchiste allemand Cohn-Bendit règle librement l'émeute (...) " in Le Monde, "Maurice Papon, une carrière française", ibid.
- ^ Base Mérimée: Verrerie dite Verreries Mécaniques Champenoises, puis Verre Mouvement Création., Ministère français de la Culture. (in French)
- ^ Jean-Paul Piérot L'Assassin était chez Citroën Archived 2007-09-11 at the Wayback Machine L'Humanité, 4 June 2007.
- ^ L'Express, 2 October 1997. (in French)
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-10-11.
- ^ "Les mémoires secrètes de Papon", Le Figaro, 20 February 2007. (in English)
- ^ Daniel Gervais, "Bordeaux, 1940: l'honneur d'un fonctionnaire. Aristides de Sousa Mendes", Libération.fr, 22 March 1996; retrieved 18 March 2014.
- ^ a b Whitney, Craig R. (February 18, 2007). "Maurice Papon, Convicted Vichy Official, 96, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved November 7, 2021.
- ^ "Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld". London, UK. Archived from the original on 9 July 2012.
- ^ Paul Webster (21 October 1999). "French justice on trial as Papon flees". The Guardian. London, UK. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
- ^ Henley, Jon (23 October 1999). "Swiss extradite Nazi collaborator Papon". The Guardian. London, UK. Retrieved 11 September 2011.
- ^ Johnson, Douglas (19 February 2007). "Obituary of Maurice Papon". The Guardian. London, UK. Retrieved 11 September 2011.
- ^ Film interview of Robert Badinter, Arno Klarsfeld and Gérard Boulanger, ina.fr; accessed 1 September 2015.
- ^ a b c Maurice Papon: la dernière polémique, RFI, 20 February 2007 (in French)
- ^ Surgery for French collaborator, BBC, 13 February 2007. (in English)
- ^ Le Figaro, 18 February 2007, "Maurice Papon sera-t-il enterré avec la Légion d'honneur?", lefigaro.fr; accessed 1 September 2015.
- ^ "Papon enterré avec sa Légion d'honneur", Le Figaro, 21 February 2007. (in French)
- ^ Maurice Papon, enterré décoré, Libération, 21 February 2007 (read here)
- ^ Have no doubt Hitler would have wiped out Arabs after Jews, Irish Independent, 24 February 2007
External links
- Simon Kitson, (University of Portsmouth French History Interview series)
- "Bousquet, Touvier and Papon: Three Vichy personalities" Archived 2011-05-20 at the Wayback Machine
- Video of the opening of the Papon trial, INA archive website
- "Maurice Papon's trial", Trial, video
- Yad Vashem :Papon trial
- Decision by the chancellor of the Legion of Honour, related to Papon's conviction and the stripping of his decoration (in French)
- ECHR judgment