Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bosquet and Touvier Affairs (review)

Book Reviews 169 demonstrations Hitler was able to achieve communion with the German Valk. Against such mass mobilization politics achieved the form of art. In the legitimate theatre art achieving the level of politics was more difficult. Wm. Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt Department of History Purdue University Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bosquet and Touvier Affairs, edited by Richard J. Golsan. Hanover, NH: University Press ofNew England, 1996. n.p.\. $19.95. The establishment of the legitimacy of the new Fourth Republic depended on the destruction of the legitimacy of the previous Vichy regime and the questioning of the loyalty and worth of those who led it. But this process was never simple, and judging collaboration often became a matter of chronology. Thus in his trial, after the war, Admiral Jean-Pierre Estava was sentenced to life imprisonment for permitting the German landing in Tunisia in 1942, although he was only following the orders of his superior Marshal Alphonse Juin, who, at the moment of Esteva's judgment, was the chief ofstaffofthe French army. Juin had the good sense to join General de Gaulle in time to salvage his reputation and ensure his freedom. But judicious timing was not always necessary to avoid jail and public opprobrium. Take the case of Rene Bosquet. Bosquet was Vichy's chief of police from April 1942 to December 1943. He participated in the roundup and deportation offoreign and French Jews from both the Occupied and Unoccupied zones. Yet in the postwar world he reentered "normal" society and carved out a successful career as a banker and businessman. In 1949 he was tried for collaboration but acquitted. He gave a familiar excuse for dealing with the enemy: he served to protect France against the fanatics who would have done real damage. Thus he saved people and was really a hero. The explanation served him at the time, but forty years later it was not good enough. Still, had it been up to President of France Fran90is Mitterand, Bosquet's trial would never have taken place. In fact, it did not play itselfout as expected. Before Bosquet could be sentenced, a publicity seeker shot him dead in his Paris luxury apartment. Another who managed, like Bosquet, to escape justice for more than forty years was Paul Touvier. Touvier, called the "Torturer ofLyons," was head ofthe intelligence branch of the Savoy Milice, that infamous paramilitary group whose fight against the Resistance involved attacks, robbery, and murder of undesirables and subversives, especially Jews. Convicted of treason in 1946, Touvier went into hiding. He was arrested a year later, but allowed to escape and despite a controversial presidential pardon in 1971 (by Georges Pompidou) remained hidden until 1989. His ability to 170 SHOFAR Spring 2000 Vol. 18, No.3 remain out of sight during this extended period was due to the protection given him by powerful groups within the French Catholic church, which provided him refuge at various "friendly" monasteries. In a lengthy and detailed introduction (about one-fourth ofthe length ofthe book), Golsan sets forth the case against both ofthese men, discussing how they, coming from different backgrounds, became associated with the direction ofthe Vichy regime. In the process he also explains the complexities of post-collaborationist France and the difficulties of the justice system in dealing with the civil servants of Vichy. To make sense of the environment in which important perpetrators of human rights abuse were able to escape and avoid justice, Golsan calls on help from a variety of experts, among them historians Henry Russo, Jean-Denis Bredin, Tzvetan Todorov, Robert O. Paxton, and journalists like Annette Levy-Willard and Sorj Chalandon. The bulk of the book consists oftheir articles, plus various interviews and news accounts. There are articles covering the judicial proceedings. This blend of sources gives the topic a drama and immediacy that might have been lacking in a straightforward monograph. For those who do not understand the French trial system the book gives a short course. The trial ofPaul Touvier, for example, dramatized the difference between historical rules of evidence and legal rules of evidence. Robert Paxton testified on the Vichy Regime's intentions to homogenize the country by excluding...