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The 1949 Trial of René Bousquet Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 23 Issue 1 Empire and Occupation in France and Article 7 the Francophone Worlds 1-1-1999 Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 trial of René Bousquet Richard J. Golsan Texas A&M University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the French and Francophone Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Golsan, Richard J. (1999) "Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 trial of René Bousquet," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 23: Iss. 1, Article 7. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1456 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 trial of René Bousquet Abstract On the morning of June 8, 1993, one Christian Didier arrived at 34 rue Raphael, a posh apartment building in Paris's sixteenth arrondissement and the residence of René Bousquet, former head of Vichy police… Keywords Christian Didier, Paris's sixteenth arrondissement, Paris, René Bousquet, Vichy, Vichy Police This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol23/iss1/7 Golsan: Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 trial of René Bousquet Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 Trial of Rene Bousquet Richard J. Golsan Texas A & M University On the morning of June 8, 1993, one Christian Didier arrived at 34 rue Raphael, a posh apartment building in Paris's sixteenth arrondissement and the residence of Rene Bousquet, former head of Vichy police. Claiming to be a messenger from the Ministry of the Interior bearing important documents concerning Bousquet's immi- nent trial for crimes against humanity, Didier was admitted into the building. After climbing the stairs, Didier knocked on Bousquet's door and was greeted by Bousquet himself. On the pretext of remov- ing the documents in question, Didier reached into his bag and ex- tracted a revolver. According to his own account, he then shot Bousquet four times at point blank-range, three times in the abdo- men and once in the head. The four shots were necessary, Didier explained, because the first few shots failed to slow Bousquet, who advanced on his assailant, called him a bastard, and tried to hit him. After the murder, Didier exited the building, crossed the Ranelagh Gardens and took the metro at La Muette. From there, he traveled to a small hotel at Lilas on the outskirts of Paris. He then called mem- bers of the press, whom he regaled with accounts of the murder. In justifying his crime, Didier stated that "[Bousquet] incarnated evil," whereas he himself "incarnated good." He likened his crime to "kill- ing a serpent."' The murder of Rene Bousquet in the summer of 1993 brought to a dramatic conclusion one of the most troubling and significant epi- sodes of the Vichy syndrome, that disturbing afterlife of les armies noires in contemporary France. But as commentators were quick to point out, Bousquet's death was as premature and frustrating in historical terms as it was spectacular. Rene Bousquet had come to Published by New Prairie Press 1 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 23, Iss. 1 [1999], Art. 7 94 STCL, Volume 23, No.1 (Winter, 1999) symbolize for many the Vichy regime's complicity with the Final Solu- tion. Many believed that his imminent trial for crimes against hu- manity for actions undertaken against the Jews while serving as Secretary General for Police in Vichy's Interior Ministry from April 1942 to December 1943 would have exposed the full horror of Vichy anti-Semitism and shattered once and for all the myth that Vichy resisted the implementation of the Final Solution. In its June 9, 1993 story on the murder of Bousquet, the headline in L'Humanite did not mention the name of the former head of Vichy's police but sim- ply affirmed: "The trial of Vichy remains to be carried out." Other newspapers, citing the need for such a trial, called for an accelera- tion of proceedings against Paul Touvier and Maurice Papon, two other Frenchmen charged with crimes against humanity for their actions against Jews during the Occupation. When Touvier was finally tried in the Yvelines Court in the spring of 1994, however, many felt the trial was just a poor substitute for the Bousquet trial that never took place. In Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas, Henry Rousso and Eric Conan refer repeatedly to the sentiment felt by many that Touvier was tried faute de mieux, and assert that "the shadow of the impossible trial of Rene Bousquet" hung uncomfort- ably over the courtroom (Conan and Rousso 141). In the spring of 1996, in an interview published in the Parisian daily Liberation, Maurice Papon stated that he saw "only advantages" in putting Vichy on trial, but that he had no wish to serve as a "scapegoat" for those he considered to be the real guilty parties. According to Papon, the culprits were those who put French forces, and the French po- lice in particular, at the disposal of the Nazis. Obviously, Papon was pointing the finger at Bousquet.2 There are a number of misperceptions attendant upon the no- tion that the trial of Rend Bousquet for crimes against humanity would, or could, somehow have constituted a symbolic, necessary, and indeed cathartic trial of Vichy, complete with a clear-cut and unambiguous verdict. First, to the extent that one can try a regime by prosecuting representative individuals, Vichy had already been tried, albeit imperfectly, during the postwar Purge.' Among those tried and convicted, moreover, was Bousquet himself, who stood trial before the High Court in 1949 for his actions as head of Vichy police during the Occupation. It was this trial to which Francois Mitterrand conveniently and misleadingly referred in the fall of 1994 when his own Vichy past and his postwar friendship with Bousquet https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol23/iss1/7created a national scandal.4 Given that Bousquet had already been DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1456 2 Golsan: Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 trial of René Bousquet Golsan 95 tried and sentenced for his actions during the war, Mitterrand ar- gued, a new trial would have constituted a clear case of double jeopardy. What Mitterrand failed to mention was that Bousquet had not been tried for crimes against humanity in 1949, since no statutes governing crimes of this nature existed in French law before 1964.3 Bousquet's role in the deportations of the Jews was, therefore, of no legal consequence. Moreover, as we shall see, the presentation be- fore the court of Bousquet's role in the deportations was seriously distorted by testimony of the chief witness, the defendant himself. Another misperception linked to the notion of trying Vichy in the person of Bousquet is that a second trial of Vichy's head of Police was necessary in order for the full truth of French complicity in the Final Solution to emerge. In an interview published in Le Figaro the day after Bousquet's murder, the lawyer and Holocaust historian Serge Klarsfeld acknowledged that Vichy's role was already fully known, and that no major new revelations would have been forth- coming had Bousquet been tried. Klarsfeld continued by noting, however, that the trial would have had great pedagogical value not only in debunking Bousquet's own claims, but in making it possible to contrast the horrors resulting from Vichy cooperation with the Nazis with official resistance to these policies in other countries. Klarsfeld's comments about the pedagogical function of a sec- ond trial of Bousquet are certainly reasonable, but perhaps overly optimistic, given a final series of legal and historical complications that almost inevitably would have arisen during the course of the proceedings. For example, it is easy to overlook the fact that from every indication, the second trial of Bousquet would have preceded the spring 1994 trial of Paul Touvier. Therefore, many of the broader legal issues raised in the Touvier trial would certainly have been aired in the trial of Bousquet. Those uncomfortable with the retroac- tive application of the statutes concerning crimes against humanity in the Touvier case would, in all likelihood, have felt the same way about their application to Bousquet, although Bousquet was ulti- mately responsible for many more deaths than Touvier. In terms of the importance of his position, moreover, Bousquet was certainly not insignificant "political rabble," as Francois Mitterrand so dis- dainfully labeled Touvier (qtd. in Wieviorka 350). Nevertheless, like Touvier, Bousquet would also be standing trial for crimes committed fifty years earlier, and many wondered if the aging and reclusive retiree was even the same man as the zealous young bureaucrat of 1942-43. Following Bousquet's murder, in fact, one newspaper at- Published by New Prairie Press 3 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 23, Iss. 1 [1999], Art. 7 96 STCL, Volume 23, No.1 (Winter, 1999) tempting to cover the "human" side of the story reported on the neighbors' perception of Bousquet as a thoughtful and kindly old man unjustly persecuted.' A thornier legal issue to be dealt with undoubtedly would have been the April 1992 decision by the Paris Court of Appeals in rela- tion to the Touvier case. To much public consternation and protest, the Court of Appeals acquitted Touvier on the grounds that he had acted on behalf of the Vichy Regime and not the Germans.
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