FRANCE:Maurice Papon oversaw the deportation of 1,560 Jews to Nazi death camps, writes Lara Marlowein Paris
Maurice Papon, the only high-ranking French civil servant to have been sent to prison for his role in the second World War deportation of Jews, died in a clinic outside Paris at the weekend. He was 96 years old.
After his past was revealed in the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné in May 1981, Papon came to symbolise French collaboration with the Nazi occupation.
The long investigation - it took nearly 17 more years to bring him to trial - coincided with the country's slow admission that, as President Jacques Chirac said in 1995, "France committed the irreparable" by turning over more than 75,000 Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps.
As secretary general of the Gironde prefecture, Papon oversaw the deportation of 1,560 Jews, including more than 200 children, between the summer of 1942 and May 1944.
He organised convoys from Bordeaux to Drancy, from where his victims were taken to gas chambers at Auschwitz. For this, he was convicted in April 1998 of "complicity in crimes against humanity". Though Papon was responsible for approximately .02 per cent of deportations from France, his prosecution was in effect the prosecution of Vichy.
Others, including the wartime Paris prefect of police René Bousquet, responsible for the round- up of 12,884 Jews at the Vél d'hiv cycling stadium, had more blood on their hands, but Bousquet was long protected by his friendship with François Mitterrand and was assassinated before he reached trial.
Papon's longevity was his downfall. He stood trial at the age of 87.
Arnaud Klarsfeld, a lawyer at the October 1997 to April 1998 trial, said: "Through [ Papon], it was the upper echelons of the Vichy civil service that was convicted. The death of Maurice Papon is anecdotal, except for his family. What counted for us was his being sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Bordeaux assize court. That was a great victory."
Klarsfeld's parents, also lawyers, founded the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees of France. Papon escaped prosecution for his role in two other atrocities. He was the prefect of the Paris police when up to 30,000 Algerian demonstrators were attacked on October 17th, 1961. Police beat them with nightsticks and threw many from the Pont Saint Michel into the Seine.
The French government acknowledged 40 deaths in 1998, although there are estimates of up to 200.
Papon was also believed responsible for the deaths of nine anti-OAS demonstrators at the Charonne metro station on February 8th, 1962. The OAS was an underground extremist group that opposed independence for Algeria.
Papon's long career followed the meanders of French politics, with him invariably siding with those in power.
In the 1930s, he belonged to the radical socialist party. When France was defeated, he joined Marshal Pétain's collaborationist Vichy government. The Germans praised him as "quick and reliable" and he rose rapidly to the rank of deputy prefect. After the Allied landings in June 1944, Papon produced certificates purporting to show he had helped the Resistance and reinvented himself as a Gaullist.
It was Charles de Gaulle, then president of France, who decorated Papon with the cross of a Commandeur De La Légion D'Honneur in 1962. Papon was stripped of the honour in 1999, after his conviction and was subsequently convicted of wearing the insignia illegally.
"I shall personally see to it that the cross of Commander of the Legion of Honour accompanies him in his tomb," Papon's lawyer Francis Vuillemin swore yesterday. Bernard Accoyer, the head of the right-wing UMP group in the National Assembly, said it would be "shocking" for Papon to be buried with the medal and implied that President Chirac, as grand chancellor of the Legion of Honour, would intervene to prevent it.
Long a deputy in the National Assembly, Papon served as budget minister from 1978 until 1981. It was nothing short of a miracle that a man of such influence should be sent to prison, yet he continued to enjoy privileges denied others. He was freed after serving only three years of his 10-year sentence, on grounds of ill health. A doctor's report had described him as bedridden, but he walked to a waiting car when he left prison in September 2002.
During his trial, Papon never looked at the civil plaintiffs.
"Maurice Papon never understood and never admitted what he had done," said Gérard Boulanger, a lawyer for the 27 civil plaintiffs. "He walled himself up behind his contempt and haughtiness; we didn't manage to bring the tormentor back to humanity."
Papon's death may be one of the final chapters in France's exorcism of its second World War past. Only last month, President Chirac paid homage to 2,740 French men and women recognised by Israel as "Just among Nations" for saving Jews. By their example, "the Just" proved the French had the choice of collaborating or not.