Maurice Papon Totally Explained

Everything about Maurice Papon totally explained

Maurice Papon (September 3 1910 – February 17 2007) was a French civil servant, industrial leader and Gaullist politician. He is best known as prefect of police of Paris during the 1950s and 1960s, treasurer of the Gaullist Party, head of the Sud Aviation company and member of the French government under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. During World War II he was secretary general for police of the Prefecture of Bordeaux. Papon participated in the repression in Algeria during the Algerian War (1954-62) as prefect of the Constantinois department. He was named chief of the Paris police in 1958. There, he ordered on October 17, 1961 the severe repression of a peaceful pro-FLN demonstration against the curfew which he'd imposed. The Paris massacre of 1961 left between 100 and 300 dead.
Personally awarded the Legion of Honour by President Charles de Gaulle in 1961, he was stripped of all his decorations after his 1998 condemnation for crimes against humanity. Papon was also in charge during the February 1962 massacre at the Charonne metro station, which took place during an anti-OAS demonstration organized by the Communist Party (PCF). Forced to quit his functions after the "disappearance" of Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Tricontinental Conference, in 1965, he became, supported by de Gaulle, director of Sud Aviation company, which created the first Concorde plane.
After May 1968, he became Minister of the Budget under prime minister Raymond Barre and president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In 1981, emergence of details about his past under Vichy led to his trial and, after a very long investigation, conviction for crimes against humanity in 1997 to 1998. Le Canard enchaîné newspaper published on May 6, 1981 documents signed by Papon which show his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Jews of Bordeaux to Drancy internment camp from 1942 to 1944. Released before the term of his 10-year sentence on grounds of health, he died on February 17, 2007, having served less than three years of his sentence.

Early years

Papon was born in the Seine-et-Marne region of northern France. The son of a solicitor-turned-industrialist, he studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, along with Georges Pompidou (later President of France) and René Brouillet (who was part of Charles de Gaulle's cabinet after the war). Papon then entered Sciences-Po and studied law, psychology and sociology. His father became mayor of Gretz when Papon was nine years old, and retained that function until 1937. He was also general counsellor (conseiller général) of Tournan-en-Brie and president of the council of this canton in 1937.
   After entering public service at the age of 20, Papon was quickly promoted. During the Second Cartel des gauches, in February 1931, he worked in the cabinet of the Minister of Air, the Radical-Socialist and freemason Jean-Louis Dumesnil . He was then named in the Ministry of Interior, in July 1935, before becoming chief of staff of the deputy director of departmental and communal affairs in January 1936, under the orders of Maurice Sabatier. In June 1936, during the Popular Front government, he was attached to the cabinet of Radical-Socialist François de Tessan, under-state secretary to the presidency of the Council and a friend of his father. Papon became a member of the Ligue d'action universitaire républicaine et socialiste, in which Pierre Mendès France was also part of, and also took membership in the Radical-Socialist youth organization .
   He followed François de Tessan, who became under Camille Chautemps' government under-state secretary to Foreign Affairs. In March 1938, he became the parliamentary attachée of de Tessan.
   Mobilized on August 26, 1939 in the 2nd colonial infantry regiment, he was sent to Tripoli and assumed responsibilities for the secret services in Ras-el-Aïn . Maurice Sabatier, who died in 1989, was found culpable for his role during Vichy in 1988, five years after his secretary general
   Papon later claimed he'd Gaullist tendencies during the war. A confidential report from the Nazis show that in April 1943, he qualified himself as "Collaborationist", during "personal or official conversations." Another document of July 1943 called him a "good negotiator" " De Gaulle had received him personally after the liberation of Bordeaux, in September 1944

Prefect of Paris (1958-1967)

In March 1958, Papon was named chief of the Paris police (préfet de police) by Félix Gaillard (Radical)'s government. He thus had an important role in the May 13, 1958 crisis which brought de Gaulle to power and lead to the founding of the Fifth Republic. He took part in the Gaullist confidential meetings which assured the instrumentalization of the crisis, preparing de Gaulle's nomination as President of the Council, which granted him extraordinary powers . On July 3, 1958, he managed to get what, according to Le Monde, he could "never have dreamed of": a "Carte d'Ancien Combattant de la Resistance" . They were mostly people from the Maghreb, but also included Spanish, Portuguese and Italians. These detainees were sent, in a tragic echo of the Vichy regime, on public buses to the Parc des Expositions, the Winter Velodrome, and other such centers which had been used under Vichy as internment centers. A massacre occurred in the courtyards of the Prefecture of Police, while the detainees were held without specific charges. In the following days at the Parc des Expositions, detainees were subject to inhumane treatments. Arrests continued during all the month of October 1961. Meanwhile bodies were found floating in the Seine River.
   Up to 200 people were killed during these events, according to leading historian Jean-Luc Einaudi
   Papon was forced to leave his functions after the kidnapping, in Paris, of Mehdi Ben Barka, Moroccan dissident and leader of the Tricontinental Conference, in October 1965. Two French police agents, as well as French secret agents, participated in this "disappearance" orchestrated at the minimum by Moroccan Interior Minister Mohamed Oufkir, which remains to this day a mysterious case involving various international intelligence agencies (Ben Barka was preparing a meeting the next year in Havana aiming to gather all anti-colonialist parties from all continents). De Gaulle was forced to ask Papon to resign at the start of 1967 The new chief of the Paris police managed to take care of the situation without a single death.
   Papon was elected deputy of Cher as candidate of the UDR Gaullist Party in May 1968. He was re-elected in 1973 and in 1978 (as member of the RPR neo-Gaullist party). He was also elected mayor of Saint-Amand-Montrond in 1971 and 1977.
   Papon was also director of the Verreries mécaniques champenoises, a glass art firm in Reims . In the evening of June 4-5, 1977, a commando shot on workers on strike, killing CGT trade-unionist Pierre Maître and severely injuring two others. Four of the five members of the commando, adherents to the CFT " yellow trade-union" were arrested by the police. The leader of the commando and shooter (who received a 20 years jail sentence), as well as the driver were members of the Service d'Action Civique.
   From 1968 to 1971, Papon was treasurer of the UDR Gaullist Party. He became President of the Finance Commission of the National Assembly in 1972 and was the deputy presenting the budget (rapporteur général du budget) from 1973 to 1978. He served as Budget Minister under Prime Minister Raymond Barre and President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing from 1978 to 1981, before finishing his mayoral mandate in 1983 and renouncing political activity.

Papon's Trial (1981-1998)

Evidence of his responsibility in the Holocaust emerged in 1981, and throughout the 1980s he fought a string of legal battles. Le Canard enchaîné newspaper published an article titled "Papon, aide de camps. Quand un ministre de Giscard faisait déporter des juifs" (Papon, aider of concentration camps: When one of Giscard's ministers deported the Jews) on May 6, 1981, just before the presidential election opposing Socialist candidate François Mitterrand and right-wing candidate Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. (Mitterrand won, defeating incumbent president Giscard.) The newspaper showed documents signed by Papon which demonstrated his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Jews of Bordeaux to Drancy from 1942 to 1944 These documents had been provided to the satirical newspaper by one of the survivors of Papon's raid, Michel Slitinsky, in the spring of 1981. He had received them from historian Michel Bergé, who had discovered them in February 1981 in the departmental archives .
   Charges of crimes against humanity, complicity of assassination and abuse of authority were first brought against Papon in January 1983. Three months later, Papon sued the families of the victims for defamation, but eventually lost
   In his 36-minute final speech to the jury, Papon rarely evoked the victims of the Holocaust, but instead portrayed himself as a victim; of "the saddest chapter in French legal history." He even denounced a "Moscow Trial," going so far as to compare his status to Alfred Dreyfus
   This angered the relatives of Papon's victims, human rights NGOs, and many in the political left, who were quick to point out that many other detainees didn't benefit from that law (including detainees in terminal stages of AIDS, or Nathalie Ménigon, a member of Action Directe still imprisoned as of 2007, despite suffering of partial hemiplegia, etc.) The Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) criticized the inequality before the law, under which Papon was freed while other prisoners didn't have this luck . Israeli officials also expressed dismay: government spokesman Avi Pazner – a former ambassador to France – said he was personally "stunned and outraged" by Papon's release. Jewish groups opposed his release because they said he showed no remorse for his actions. "It's a difficult decision for us Israelis to accept given the abominable crimes of which Papon was convicted," Israeli President Moshe Katzav said in 2002.

Papon's funeral: the last controversy

In March 2004, the chancery of the Legion of Honour accused Papon of wearing his decoration (which he was stripped of after his conviction) illegally while being photographed for a press interview for Le Point. He was tried and fined €2,500.
In February 2007, Papon underwent what was thought to be successful heart surgery to correct problems with congestive heart failure, but died a few days later on February 17 at the age of 96 .
His attorney, Francis Vuillemin, declared that Papon should be buried with insignias of Commander of the Legion of Honour. This triggered indignation from all French political parties, except Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front . Bernard Accoyer, head of the UMP group in the French National Assembly, suggested that, as high chancellor of the Order of the Legion of Honour, President Chirac might personally intervene to prevent this, but Papon was eventually buried with the insignia on February 21, 2007 . A son of one of Papon's victims observed, "Besides being a remorseless dead man, he also wishes to remain a vengeful one." Further Information

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