France's Enduring Shame....

The Iconoclast ^ | September 19, 2002 | Marni-Rebecca Malarkey

[Apolitical]

DAILY NOTEBOOK


France's Enduring Shame....



September 19, 2002: I'm guessing that of the 1,690 French Jews 92-year-old Maurice Papon was responsible for sending to German death camps between 1942-1944, exactly none of them were set free because they were old and infirm. And yet Wednesday, Papon himself walked out of prison and into a storm of public outrage after judges ruled him too old and sick to finish his 10-year sentence for sending those Jews to Nazi death camps.

Papon has barely served three years of his sentence, a sentence given him after the longest trial (six months) in French history. (Ever the coward, after the verdict he fled to Switzerland until he was brought back to France in October 1999 and imprisoned.)

Under the Vichy regime, Papon was second in command of the Bordeaux police and signed orders that led to the deportation of 1,690 Jews from 1942-1944. Most were sent to Auschwitz.

After the war, Papon became Paris police chief in 1958, a post he held until 1967. In 1968 he was elected to France's national assembly, and in 1979 he became budget minister under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Papon's wartime record was revealed in 1981, but his trial did not start until 1997. Like other senior Vichy officials who evaded justice, Papon was shielded at the highest levels. In 1994, a then dying and guilt-ridden President Francois Mitterrand admitted in a television interview he intervened to stall the case.

Papon's lawyers filed a release request this summer, based on a new provision in French law that allows prisoners to be freed if two independent doctors agree they are suffering from a fatal illness, or that their long-term health is jeopardized by imprisonment (Papon has a heart condition and a pacemaker). Leave it to the French to come up with a law like that. I would say we could all safely bet our lives that the "long-term health" of virtually every death camp inmate during the Second World War was "jeopardized" by the fact of their being in a death camp.

I am not suggesting that prisoners should not have proper health care while they serve their time, but the idea that they should be released because of their health is ridiculous. Surely prison is, at least in part, for punishment. And given the nature of Papon's crimes, what has transpired this week is obscene, offensive, appalling and an affront to justice (at best). His lawyers said that Papon will not be subjected to any surveillance but will have to inform a judge when he leaves his residence (an elegant mansion outside of Paris). Oh gosh, now that's rough treatment, right up there with gas chambers and crematoriums...........

[Apolitical]

What a hypocritical and cowardly nation the French are.

[catonsville]

There is one consolation. This old man will meet his God soon who does not take lightly the slaughter of the innocent.

[thinktwice]

What a hypocritical and cowardly nation the French are.

Look homeward, Angel. We have our Clinton, the French have their Papon, and most every cemetery on earth has sons of bitches buried therein.

[Tao Yin]

You have to give them credit for mayonnaise though.

[sheik yerbouty]

Actually Ed McMahon once told Johnny Carson that his family invented it. It was initially called "McMahon's Ease".

[Cicero]

The only reservation I have about this is that I am tired of the constant moralistic pounding of the crimes of what intellectuals call the "right" and their constant blindness to the crimes of what intellectuals call the "left."

The essence of Papon's crimes is that he cooperated or collaborated with Hitler's evil regime. What about all those French Communists who cooperated with Stalin? What about the leftist intellectuals who trained Pol Pot in French universities to commit one of the most vile pogroms of the twentieth century? What about the European leftists who went to Spain in the 1930s and helped murder thousands of innocent priests, nuns, and faithful Catholic laypeople?

This kind of selective outrage is very curious.

[widowithfoursons]

OK, but he is a war criminal, and a traitor. There were many in the French Resistance who deserve honor. This guy is scum; I don't care how old he is.

[Axenolith]

mayonnaise is the juice of the devil!

Miracle Whip all the way dude!

[dfwgator]

OK, I am not a fan of Clinton, but geez this guy was a NAZI WAR CRIMINAL for crying out loud. This guy should have considered himself lucky that he wasn't hung 50 years ago. The Nazis didn't spare the old and sick from the gas chambers because of health reasons, did they?

[dfwgator]

I agree with 100% on that. A pox on both their houses.

[thinktwice]

The Nazis didn't spare the old and sick from the gas chambers because of health reasons, did they?

Among Clinton's innumerable atrocities, is Waco -- women and children were burned to death at Waco by Clinton and company.

[dfwgator]

Why the French--the country that invented the guillotine!--have this squeamish attitude towards ridding society of its worst vermin is completely baffling to me.

Frankly, because many French supported the things they did.

[rockfish59]

Sounds like California 'justice!'

[mondonico]

No, they are not cowardly. France has historically been one of the greatest allies of the United States, all throughout our entire history.

Does that include the collaborationist Vichy France that fired on Allied troops in Africa while sending 70,000 of their own citizens to the death camps?

[ExpandNATO]

Oh really...

The French monarchy paid Indian tribes to scalp whites during its wars with England.

The French monarchy was a good ally during the War of Independence from England.

It should be noted that Revolutionary France forced many of those who fought for America, such as Lafayette, into exile lest their heads be chopped off.

Revolutionary France seized American ships and then demanded tribute for stopping. This occasioned a short undeclared naval war.

During the Civil War, France kind of favored the South, but never really supported it, occupying Mexico instead. After the Civil War, the US lined up 50,000 troops along the Mexican border and said leave. France left.

During the 1870s (IIRC) France gifted the US with the statue of liberty.

During World War I, the French wanted to use American troops to fill out their own formations, but Pershing refused.

America had to save France in World War II, but post-war DeGaulle's resentment drove France away from the US into a weird diplomatic state.

The US for its part did not support France well, neither against terrorists in Algeria, nor when Great Britain, France and Israel set out to try taking back the Suez from Eqypt. They succeeded in taking the Canal, but the US stood shoulder to shoulder with the USSR in demanding that they leave (for some demented reason).

France refused overflight rights to American planes bombing Libya.

France has been a major seller of nuclear, chemical and biological dual use technology to Iraq.

Hardly "greatest allies" and decidedly a mixed bag.