The fall of France

In the Hollywood classic, Casablanca, the cynical French police captain played by Claude Rains justifies his willingness to work with the Gestapo by explaining to Humphrey Bogart: "I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind blows from Vichy."

Over half a century later, the residue stench of France's collaborationist World War II regime still lingers over that nation, as evidenced last week by the release from prison of Maurice Papon.

The 92-year old Papon was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in 1998 for complicity in crimes against humanity, because of his role in 1942-44 organizing the transport of some 1,600 Jews from Bordeaux, where he served as a top Vichy police commander, to the Drancy transit camp in Paris on their way to Auschwitz.

Last Wednesday Papon was prematurely released after a French appeals court ruled on "humanitarian" grounds that he is too ill to serve the rest of his sentence. This despite the fact that last year the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a similar appeal after ruling that Papon's "general state of health is deemed to be good," and that he was still able to walk out of prison last week on his own two feet.

But even if his condition were worse, it is difficult to see why Papon deserves any special mercy. From the start he has remained unrepentant about his crimes, and tried to avoid justice by fleeing to Switzerland shortly before his trial. Despite documentary evidence showing that he was diligent in rounding up Jews, he tried on the witness stand to paint himself as an uninvolved bureaucrat who even tried to save Jews although he was unable to name any. Last year a French court ruled he had deliberately declared bankruptcy in order to avoid a ruling that he pay his victims' legal fees.

The shame of Papon's release falls upon more than just the three judges who released him. It is indicative of the general reluctance of the French establishment to grapple honestly with its dark legacy of wartime collaboration. Other than Paul Touvier, the former Vichy intelligence chief who was sent to prison in 1994, Papon is the only top Vichy official be jailed on Holocaust-related charges. (Rene Basquiat, the Vichy national police commander who was finally charged with war crimes decades after carrying them out, was gunned down on the eve of his trial in 1993.)

Unlike Touvier, who remained underground for nearly 40 years, Papon hid in plain sight. Like many other high-ranking Vichy officials, after the war he went on to serve in several senior government positions, including chief of the Paris police in the 1950s and budget minister for president Valery Giscard d'Estaing in the 1970s.

After his conviction, a number of prominent French politicians including two former prime ministers, Pierre Messmer and Raymond Barre and intellectuals signed a petition urging French President Jacques Chirac to pardon him. Around that time the magazine Le Point also revealed that a longtime deputy of Chirac's, Michel Junot, was responsible for "maintaining order" over a shipment of Jews from occupied France to a German death camp.

"The men of Vichy, in the great majority, did their work conscientiously, honestly, more or less skillfully," Junot told Le Point. "If there were Frenchmen who made errors, or sometimes committed crimes during this era, I think one draws over it a discreet veil of history."

No "discreet veil" should be drawn over the fact that Vichy officials like Papon cruelly assisted the Germans in their murderous assault on French Jewry. His unjustified release was rightly condemned by French Jewish leaders, including Michel Slitinsky, president of the Deportation Victims' Families Association, who added that this "shocking decision may encourage anti-Semites in their acts of violence" after a year that saw a large number of attacks against French-Jewish schools, cemeteries, and synagogues.

The French government is now reportedly examining ways to overturn Papon's release. Chirac, who previously had turned away requests to pardon him, should make this a personal priority. It is far too late for France to ever fully make amends to the victims of Papon and Vichy. But to deny them even this small measure of justice after so long, would truly represent the moral fall of France.

Last Wednesday Papon was prematurely released after a French appeals court ruled on
"humanitarian" grounds that he is too ill to serve the rest of his sentence.

From the photos I saw, he is an old guy.
But he was happily walking out of the prison by his-own-bad-self...he wasn't
being carried out on a stretcher with an IV in his arm.

He'll probably die with a smile on his face after another gourmet meal...
in a decade or so.

I knew someone who was a survivor of Dachau. I once asked asked him how the now old former Nazis must feel. the ones that weren't punished. I mentioned that these murderers are now very old men and close to death.

Are they contrite or afraid of God, are they asking for forgiveness, making amends, saying they are sorry? I was judging them by what I would do.

He answered that these men would just be pleaed that they were never caught and got away with it.

There would be no remorse unto death.

He'll probably die with a smile on his face after another gourmet meal... in a decade or so.

Maybe. Then again, a smart man would probably stay in prison :)

New Palestine (previously France) has surrendered AGAIN.

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