Papon: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (article)

When the trial for crimes against humanity of former Vichy functionary and Gaullist minister Maurice Papon ended on 2 April 1998 in Bordeaux after nearly six months of deliberations, by all accounts most of the French breathed a sigh of relief. Scheduled to last only two to three months and, in the eyes of many, to offer an exemplary and final judgment on Vichy complicity in the Final Solution, the Papon trial quickly overflowed the historical, judicial, and temporal banks intended to channel its progress to become a seemingly endless fiasco that embittered some and perplexed others. ¹ In many ways, the events in Bordeaux resembled a two-, or better yet, a three-ring circus. The convoluted and often confused legal proceedings in the courtroom were accompanied by a continuous media spectacle in the hall outside the cour d'assizes as well as in front of the court house itself. Each time the President of the Court, Jean-Louis Castagnède, announced a recess, defense and civil parties lawyers exited the courtroom to be greeted by reporters, bright lights, and television cameras. Those interviewed commented sur le vif not only on testimony just given but editorialized about its long-term implications for the trial or the eventual fate of the accused. The stars of the show included Papon's haughty defense counsel, Jean-Marc Varaut, a distinguished lawyer and author of books on the Nuremberg trials and the trial of Philippe Pétain, and civil parties lawyer Arno Klarsfeld, the son of "memory militants" Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. Arno's long hair, casual attire (usually blue jeans and boots under his robes) and photogenic good looks, along with his penchant for arriving on roller blades and indulging in outrageous and occasionally abusive tactics in court, distingushed him from other counsel as well the other participants in the trial itself. While Klarsfeld fils alternately dazzled or offended those inside, on the steps of the courthouse Klarsfeld père led demonstrations and commemorations and offered outspoken opinions to the media often intended to put pressure on the proceedings themselves. For Henry Rousso, one of the harshest critics of the trial for a number of reasons, the procès virtuel outside the courtroom only served further to compromise the vexed trial within.

And there is no doubt that the trial itself was vexed. Shortly after it got under way, for example, during the traditional examination of the accused's curriculum vitae, the proceedings were at least temporarily derailed in historical and legal terms by controversy surrounding Papon's role as Prefect of Paris Police on the night of 17 October 1961. Acting on Papon's orders, police brutally supressed a demonstration by Algerians protesting a curfew imposed on them. Depending on which account one believes, between fifty and two hundred demonstrators were killed, and many of their bodies were thrown into the Seine. Before the trial in Bordeaux even began, Pierre Vidal-Naquet argued in Le Nouvel Observateur that these slayings also constituted crimes against humanity, and that there was ample reason to try Papon for these crimes as well. When questioned about 17 October 1961 in the box in Bordeaux, Papon clearly lied about the events that took place as well as those responsible for the deaths, just as he had in 1961 and, later, in his 1988 memoirs, Les Chevaux du pouvoir. As public outrage over this other troubled past grew, Minister of Culture and Communication Catherine Trautman announced that the archives would be opened so the truth of the matter could be discovered. ²

When the trial turned to the Occupation itself and focused both on Papon's role as Secretary General of the Gironde prefecture in the deportation of some 1,600 French and foreign Jews between 1942 and 1944 and his claim of having been active in the Resistance, the flaws in the state's case against Papon began to surface. The lack of concrete evidence against the accused...