TOUVIER ARRESTED, BOUSQUET CHARGED

THE ARREST, IN May 1989, of Paul Touvier—the former leader of the Milice, the French militia created in 1943 to help fight the Resistance—put an end to a total of thirty-five years spent on the run from justice. There was a brief period, around 1972, when he came out of hiding after being officially pardoned; in June of that year, Beate and I took some young LICA activists (and Arno, who was six years old at the time) to protest this pardon—granted by President Pompidou—outside Touvier’s house. Twenty-two years later, Arno would represent the Sons and Daughters at Touvier’s trial.

In 1989, the FFDJF were plaintiffs against Touvier, and I helped the investigating judge, Jean-Pierre Getti, with documentary research. It was Getti and his predecessor Claude Grellier who were the driving forces behind Touvier’s arrest. On May 23, the gendarmes searched the abbey in Saint-Michel-en-Brenne. They questioned the abbot after discovering some suitcases marked LACROIX, one of Touvier’s aliases. The gendarmes told the abbot that Serge Klarsfeld and his organization were hunting Touvier and that it would be better for Touvier if it was the gendarmes who got their hands on him. He was arrested later that day.

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ON SEPTEMBER 26, 1990, at the request of Pierre Arpaillange, the French minister of justice, the public prosecutor’s office in Paris opened an investigation against René Bousquet for crimes against humanity.

Five days later, I was conducting a symposium in the Senate when an elderly, distinguished-looking gentleman appeared shyly at the entrance of the room. “I am the minister of justice,” he told Beate, who led him to the stage.

Before the symposium, I had been talking with the Paris general prosecutor, Pierre Truche, who shared my opinion that the legal proceedings begun against Bousquet should lead to the criminal court, and not to the High Court, which had been inactive since 1954.

There was something strange about the speech given by Arpaillange that day: he mentioned his immediate aversion to Pétain and his politics, his membership in the Resistance, and his undying attachment to its values. Then he left and, that afternoon, resigned from the government. We realized that he had been pushed out when we discovered, on October 8, that the prosecutor general had changed his position and was now championing the High Court. Henri Nallet was named minister of justice, Georges Kiejman his deputy.

I angrily wrote a press release designed to make Kiejman lose his temper:

This U-turn can only be explained by the determination of those at the top of the political ladder not to let the anti-Jewish actions of the Vichy government, police, and administration go on trial. This attitude, which is unchanged since 1945, is against the interests of France. The prosecutor general’s reversal of position can be explained by the change of the minister of justice on October 2. A deportee’s son [Robert Badinter] was minister of justice when the chief of the Gestapo in Lyon was brought to France to be tried. A deportee’s son [Georges Kiejman] was named deputy minister of justice to ensure the impunity of the head of the Vichy police. The FFDJF calls on Georges Kiejman to resign his position so that his name is not mixed up in the burial of the Bousquet dossier.

Kiejman’s response was “My commitment within the government is a general commitment that goes well beyond my status as a deportee’s son. And so I believe that, despite my respect for Serge Klarsfeld, I do not have to take moral lessons from him. On a more technical level, it seems preferable that it is the High Court or its equivalent that should try Bousquet.” The closing sentences of his statement were extremely revealing about the nature of the instructions he had received: “Other than the technical problem, we must be aware that—beyond the necessary struggle for remembrance—it can seem important to preserve the civil peace. There are other ways to denounce the cowardice of the Vichy regime than through a trial.”

On October 22, the corridors of the courthouse were taken over by the Sons and Daughters. In the meantime, I directly attacked the president of the Republic in the media by mentioning his work for Vichy in 1942.

In the end, the Bousquet dossier was not buried. On November 18, 1990, the grand jury courageously issued a decree in which it declared itself competent to investigate Bousquet’s crimes against humanity.

Judge Getti, who was investigating both the Touvier and the Bousquet cases, was asked by the grand jury to provide a report answering a legal question: Did the evidence I had produced constitute new facts, ones that had not been considered during Bousquet’s 1949 trial? The response, given in June 1991, was positive: Yes, this was new evidence. Bousquet was charged.

Subsequently, there were several hearings. The minutes of the meeting on July 2, 1942, involving Bousquet and the leaders of the SS were authenticated by Herbert Hagen, who wrote them and whom we had convicted in Cologne in 1980. But on June 8, 1993, just as the trial was about to begin, Bousquet was assassinated.