FRENCH NAZI COLLABORATOR - Maurice Papon is dead

According to a article in German that was published in the German magazine "Der Spiegel" the ruthless French nazi-collaborator Maurice Papon died in the age of 96 years on February 17, 2007.

As secretary general of the prefecture Bordeaux Papon signed orders for the imprisonment and deportation or the jews in that area. Altogether there were 76.000 jews -among them 12.000 kids- arrested in France and displaced into the concentration camps of the nazis. Only 2.500 survived the Holocaust.

Papon is definitly responsible for the deportation of 1,560 Jewish men, women and children. The majority were sent directly to detention camps at Drancy internment camp, at the outskirts of Paris, and then to Auschwitz or similar concentration camps. Few survived.

By mid-1944, when it was clear that the war was turning against the Germans, Papon began to inform on the Nazis to the Resistance—for which he was later to be decorated with the treasured "Carte d'Ancien Combattant de la Resistance".

Papon retained his official functions after the war, although, according to Olivier Guichard, Charles de Gaulle "perfectly knew his past" and had received him personally after the liberation of Bordeaux.

He went to Morocco in 1954 as general secretary of the protectorate, and there helped crush the Moroccan nationalists. He then returned to Constantine in 1956 during the Algerian War (1954-62), where he actively participated in the repression and the use of torture against the civilian population.

In March 1958, he was named chief of the Paris police (préfet de police) by Félix Gaillard (Radical)'s government. As prefect of police, he had an important role in the May 13, 1958 crisis which brought de Gaulle to power. He took part in the Gaullist confidential meetings which assured the instrumentalization of the crisis, preparing de Gaulle's nomination as President of the Council, which granted him extraordinary powers. On July 12, 1961, president Charles de Gaulle bestowed on him the French Legion of Honour for service to the state.

He commanded the repression during the Paris massacre of 1961. On October 17, 1961, after a peaceful march organized by the Algerian National Liberation Front, 40 (according to French government) to 200 (according to historian Jean-Luc Einaudi) Algerian civilians were killed in Paris, many of whom thrown in the Seine river by the French police. The exact number of the dead remains unknown.

From 1967 to 1968, he was president of the company Sud Aviation. Elected deputy of Cher as candidate of the UDR Gaullist Party in 1968, he is reelected in 1973 and in 1978 (as member of the RPR neo-Gaullist party). He was also elected mayor of Saint-Amand-Montrond in 1971 and reelected in 1977.

From 1968 to 1971, he was treasurer of the Gaullist Party. President of the Commission of the Finances of the National Assembly in 1972, he is the rapporteur général du budget (deputy presenting the budget) from 1973 to 1978. He then served as Budget Minister under Prime Minister Raymond Barre and President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing from 1978 to 1981, before finishing his mayor mandate in 1983 and renouncing to political activity.

Little by little, evidence of his responsibility in the Holocaust emerged, and throughout the 1980s he fought a string of legal battles.

Le Canard enchaîné newspaper published on May 6, 1981, an article titled "Papon, aide de camps. Quand un ministre de Giscard faisait dé- porter des juifs," between the two turns of the presidential election opposing Socialist candidate François Mitterrand to the right-wing candidate Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In this article, the newspaper showed documents signed by Papon which demonstrated his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Jews of Bordeaux to Drancy from 1942 to 1944.

Charges of crimes against humanity were first brought in 1983, but the whole investigation was cancelled in 1987 because of legal technicalities (a mistake by the investigative magistrate). New charges were laid in 1988, and the investigation finished in 1995. Papon finally went to trial on 8 October 1997, after fourteen years of bitter legal wrangling. The trial went on to be the longest in French history, while Papon denounced a "Moscow Trial," going so far as to assimilate his status to Alfred Dreyfus.

The trial had different meanings for different French people; for some it was the last chance to confront their collaborationist history in a court room. Because of his arrogance, his contempt and his refusal to express regrets or remorse during and since the lawsuit, Papon drew contempt from many.

Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, including children and the elderly, between 1942 and 1944.

In his 36-minute final speech to the jury, Papon rarely evoked the victims of the Holocaust, but instead portrayed himself as a victim; of "the saddest chapter in French legal history."

Papon was convicted in 1998 and given a 10-year prison term, which was criticized by some for being too short. His lawyers filed an appeal before the Court of Cassation. As Papon had fled to Switzerland, his appeal was summarily denied because of the Court's practice of requiring persons convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison terms to give themselves up prior to the appeal. After Switzerland sent him back to France to serve his prison sentence, he was sent to La Santé jail on October 22, 1999. Papon was also stripped of all his decorations; under French law, people convicted of severe crimes cannot be members of the Legion of Honor.

He applied for release on the grounds of poor health in March 2000, but President Jacques Chirac denied the petition. He continued to fight legal battles while in prison, taking his denied appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, where he argued the French court's denial of his appeal on a technicality (rather than on the merits of the case) constituted a violation of his right to appeal his conviction. The Court agreed in July 2002, admonishing the Court of Cassation and awarding Papon FF429,192 (approx. €65,400) in legal costs, but no damages.

However, Papon's lawyers had meanwhile been pursuing a separate appeal in France, petitioning for his release under the terms of a March 2002 law that provided for the release of ill and elderly prisoners to receive outside medical care. His doctors affirmed that Papon, by this time 92 years old, was essentially incapacitated, so he became the second person released under the terms of the law, leaving jail on September 18, 2002, less than 3 years into his sentence.

The text above is a abstract to a excellent article in Wikipedia about Maurice Papon. You can read it here:

Being responsible for deportations is not necessarily the same as conscious cooperation in the deportees' deaths.

Sure, under the generous terms the Nuremberg laws Jews and Gypsies unjoyed special status as "protected persons". They were just being sent to the dritte Reich for some exercise and education. I sure he felt it was for their own good.

Thanks to Rene Carmille and the Marco Polo Resistance Network, the number of people deported and murdered would have been higher. Rene Carmille thwarted much of Maurice Papon's work. Carmille was torchered for two days before he died.

"No power in the world", he exhorted them, "can stop you from remembering that you are the heirs of those who defended the country of France, from those who stood on the bridge of Bouvines...to those who fought at the Marne. Remember that!

"No power in the world can stop you from remembering that you are the heirs of the Cartesian thought, of the mysticism and the mathematics of Pascal, of the clarity of the writers of the 16th Century, and the perennial accomplishments of the 19th Century thinkers, all this - in France. Remember that!

"No power in the world can stop you from realizing that your institution has furnished the world with [great] thinkers...that freedom of thought has always existed...with rigor and tenacity. Remember that!

"No power in the world can stop you from knowing that the motto inscribed in gold letters on the pavilian: 'For Country, For Knowledge, and For Glory,' and the weighty heritage that constitutes the immense work of your ancestors, if for you a categorical imperative which must guide your path of conduct. Remember that!

"All this is written in your soul, and no one can control your soul, because your soul only belongs to God".

- Rene Carmille
1943, Polytechnic School, Paris

I don't excuse Papon's collaboration with this evil regime, not at all. I do say the hatred on the thread is probably over-the-top. From what I've read, the jury didn't convict Papon of murder, because they agreed that he didn't know the victims would be exterminated. People assume, for example, that concentration camps were the same as extermination camps. They weren't.

"Being responsible for deportations is not necessarily the same as conscious cooperation in the deportees' deaths. We need to drop the hysteria and get some more facts before we froth at the mouth about this."

Oh yeah, I am sure he merely thought the Germans were sending them to a summer camp, don't you think? He should have been hung.

"I don't excuse Papon's collaboration with this evil regime, not at all. I do say the hatred on the thread is probably over-the-top. From what I've read, the jury didn't convict Papon of murder, because they agreed that he didn't know the victims would be exterminated. People assume, for example, that concentration camps were the same as extermination camps. They weren't."

Most of the people sent there died under the Nazis anyway, so what's the difference.

DUDE, you are starting to SMELL like one of the people in my tag-line below....which if you are not ought to make you think!

Its the last sentence above that's a giveaway.

Let me clue you in: The Nazis destroyed the country of my birth, killing 1,000,000 people in the process - some of whom were my own family members, including my uncle....my Dad fought them for 3 years behind enemy lines (his name was on a Gestapo list of individuals to be rounded up and liquidated following the invasion - a single fact that makes me just as proud of him as anything that he did after the war).

EVERY SINGLE COLLABORATOR should have been SHOT after the war.

You have NO CLUE what the Nazis were. I do. Psycopathic, pathologically lying, atheist-con-men mass murderers. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

And anyone who collaborated with the, or makes excuses for them today is no better.

Most of the people sent there died under the Nazis anyway, so what's the difference.

DUDE, you are starting to SMELL like one of the people in my tag-line below....which if you are not ought to make you think!

Its the last sentence above that's a giveaway.

EVERY SINGLE COLLABORATOR should have been SHOT after the war.

You have NO CLUE what the Nazis were. I do. Psycopathic, pathologically lying, atheist-con-men mass murderers. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

And anyone who collaborated with them, or makes excuses for them today is no better.

You're setting up a false dilemma. I simply said that the jury found that he did not know they would be killed. I don't excuse concentration camps. Of course they were a tool of evil tyranny. That doesn't alter the fact that there was a difference between concentration camps and extermination camps.

I know plenty about the Nazis, and of course I detest them.
Stop with your self-righteous lectures. I don't deny that Papon should have known, or may have known, that the poor people MIGHT be killed. That's not the same as a mass murderer who deserves to go to hell. Nor, for that matter, do I deny that he shouldn't have collaborated with the Nazis in any way. Of course he shouldn't have. But again, we have to distinguish the various degrees of culpability and degrees of evil. Apparently, this is what Papon's jury did. It is part of our Western heritage, and of freedom.

Gurs camp as photographed from a water tower. Gurs, France, ca. 1941 - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Gurs camp was one of the first and largest camps established in prewar France. It was located in the Basque region of southwestern France, just to the south of the village of Gurs. The camp, about 50 miles from the Spanish border, was situated in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains northwest of Oloron-Sainte-Marie.

The French government established the Gurs camp in April 1939, before war with Germany and well before the occupation of France in June 1940. Originally, Gurs served as a detention camp for political refugees and members of the International Brigade fleeing Spain after the Spanish Civil War.

In early 1940, the French government also interned about 4,000 German Jewish refugees as "enemy aliens," along with French resistence leaders who opposed the war with Germany. Gurs fell under the authority of the new collaborationist French government, the Vichy regime.

About 3,000 Jews died in internment camps on French soil. About 1,000 Jews were executed or murdered in France during the Occupation.

Cool. Its just a touchy subject with me. I was just having a go at a David Irving sympathizer on another thread a few days ago so my trigger finger was still itchy, I guess. :>)

He should still have died in prison. (I wonder why de Gaulle thought he'd be useful to him - that's the other side of the story to Google another day...)

Cool. It's a touchy subject with you -- and should be.
David Irving definitely seems like a negative force.
I am in no way a fan of those who would "re-evaluate" Hitler or Nazism, or would deny or minimize the Holocaust.
But I know there are such people, and I'm sure there are some on FReep. Go get 'em.

About DeGaulle's use of Papon, I have a sense that the French (in the old days, at least), despite their ambivalence about the U.S., DeGaulle's leaving NATO, etc., were very tough guys in their own way. As I imagine you know, the (very Stalinist, Soviet-controlled) Communist Party was very strong in France. I'm not sure I blame DeGaulle for using very tough tactics and very tough people (as I would guess Papon was) against the communists and their ilk. And, even very bright people like DeGaulle can simply be wrong, or ignorant, about certain key facts. It seems unlikely in the case of Papon, but one never knows. It's fair to say that DeGaulle should have been more sensitive to the ethical issue here.

Yes, there is more to say, France has never fully emerged from that sad period in their history. The French government is as untrustworthy an ally as they were then. Nothing has changed, they are still self-interested, arrogant, cowards who would sell out their own mothers if it would gain them some status.

Well I am from Germany and I live near the French boarder having many friends and even some relatives (an uncle of mine married into a family in Paris) over there. Let me say that much - not all Frenchmen are like Chirac and French soldiers are for sure no cowards.

We Germans won in WWII against them because we had the better strategy and better weapons. It had nothing to do with the common French soldiers. Personally I had a perfect experience with the French comrades I worked together during my service in the German Airforce. Not the kind of guys that backstab you.

You have NO CLUE what the Nazis were. I do. Psycopathic, pathologically lying, atheist-con-men mass murderers. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

Yup. This is indeed true. I had the "privilege" to know a few of them. The most dangerous people you can think of since they were absolutely convinced of themselves and of their homicidal acting. In the meantime they are -thank God- all death.

I'm sure that not all French men are as greedy and self interested as Chirac and Villapain, oh whatever his name is, but the fact is that they have been elected over and over because the average French man thinks only of his daily life and government benefits. They French are willing to abandon everything, even their culture to gain oil and government benefits. The anti-American feelings in Europe are aimed at gaining favor from the world despots and more oil contracts. Austria and Germany are no different. Europe will sell out their own culture for oil, it is already happening. This time the US will not come to the rescue.

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