Paul Touvier

Last updated • 5 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Paul Touvier
Born
Paul Claude Marie Touvier

(1915-04-03)3 April 1915
Died17 July 1996(1996-07-17) (aged 81)
NationalityFrench
Other namesPaul Berthet
Conviction(s) Crimes against humanity
Criminal penalty Life imprisonment (1994)
Career
AllegianceFlag of France (1794-1958).svg  Vichy France
  • Flag of the collaborationist French Militia.svg Head of the intelligence department in the Chambéry Milice
Service / branch Milice
Years of service1943–1945
Spouse(s)Monique Berthet (m. 1947-1996; his death)
Children2

Paul Claude Marie Touvier (3 April 1915 – 17 July 1996) was a French Nazi collaborator during World War II in Occupied France. In 1994, he became the first Frenchman ever convicted of crimes against humanity, [1] for his participation in the Holocaust under Vichy France.

Contents

Early life

Paul Claude Marie Touvier was born on 3 April 1915 in Saint-Vincent-sur-Jabron, Alpes de Haute-Provence, in southeastern France. His family was devoutly Roman Catholic, lower-middle-class and extremely conservative. [2] [3] He was one of 11 children, [3] and the oldest of the five boys. He served as an altar boy when he was young, and attended a seminary for a year, intending to become a priest. [2]

Touvier's mother, Eugenie, was an orphan who was raised by nuns. As an adult, she was very religious and went to Mass every day. [2] She died when Touvier was a teenager. [3] His father, François Touvier, was a tax collector in Chambéry, after having retired after serving as a career soldier for 19 years. Touvier's father was very conservative, an admirer of the monarchist and anti-parliamentarist Charles Maurras and L'Action Française. [2]

Paul Touvier graduated from the Institute Saint Francis de Sales in Chambéry at the age of 16. When he turned 21, his father got him a job as a clerk at the local railroad station, where he was working when World War II began. [3] Touvier was mobilized for the war effort in 1939. After the Vichy government was created, Touvier and his family were firm supporters of its leader Philippe Pétain. Father and son joined the Vichy veterans' group when it was founded in 1941. [2]

War years

Joining the French 8th Infantry Division, Touvier fought against the German Wehrmacht until, following the bombing of Chateau-Thierry, he deserted. Touvier returned to Chambéry in 1940, which was then occupied by the Kingdom of Italy. His life took a new course after the Milice (the Vichy French militia) was established.

Touvier had become known for womanizing and for trading in the black market. Disgusted by his son's libertine lifestyle, his devoutly Catholic father persuaded him to join the Milice, hoping that a little military discipline would "make a man out of his son."

Touvier was eventually appointed head of the intelligence department in the Chambéry Milice under the direction of the Gestapo and SD, serving as a subordinate. In January 1944 he became its second regional head.

In Paris on 28 June 1944, 15 members of the Résistance, dressed as members of the Milice, assassinated Vichy France Minister for Propaganda Philippe Henriot as he slept in the Ministry building where he lived and worked. As it was suspected that the assassins were from Lyon, Touvier was ordered to conduct reprisal killings. On 30 June, Touvier found seven French Jewish prisoners already in custody, and had them executed by firing squad.

Post liberation

After the liberation of France by the Allied forces, Touvier went into hiding; he escaped the summary execution suffered by many suspected collaborators during the épuration sauvage . On 10 September 1946, the government sentenced him to death in absentia for treason and collusion with the Nazis. In 1947, he was arrested for armed robbery in Paris, but escaped.

Fugitive

By 1966, implementation of his death sentence was barred based on a 20-year statute of limitations. Attorneys for Touvier filed an application for a pardon. They requested that the lifetime ban on leaving the country and the confiscation of goods linked to capital punishment be lifted. In 1971, French President Georges Pompidou granted Touvier the pardon.

Pompidou's pardon caused a public outcry. This increased when it was revealed that most of the property which Touvier claimed as his own had allegedly been seized from deported Jews.

On 3 July 1973, Georges Glaeser filed a complaint against Touvier, charging him with crimes against humanity, which had no statute of limitations. Glaeser accused Touvier of ordering the execution of seven Jewish hostages at Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon, on 29 June 1944 in retaliation for the murder of Philippe Henriot, the Vichy Government's Secretary of State for Information and Propaganda, which had occurred the previous evening. After being indicted, Touvier disappeared again. Years of legal maneuvering ensued through his lawyers until a warrant was issued for his arrest on 27 November 1981.

Arrest and trial

On 24 May 1989, Touvier was arrested at the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) priory in Nice. The SSPX said at the time that Touvier had been allowed to live in the priory as "an act of charity to a homeless man". [4]

Death

On 17 July 1996, Paul Touvier died of prostate cancer at the age of 81 in Fresnes Prison, near Paris. A Tridentine Requiem Mass was offered for the repose of his soul by Father Philippe Laguérie at St Nicolas du Chardonnet, the Society of St. Pius X chapel, in Paris. He was survived by his widow, Monique (died 2018), and their two children, Chantal and Pierre.

The Irish-Canadian novelist Brian Moore's 1995 novel, The Statement , is loosely based on Touvier's life. It was adapted as a film, also titled The Statement (2003), directed by Norman Jewison. Michael Caine appeared as Pierre Brossard, a character inspired by Touvier.

An episode of the History Television series Nazi Hunters, first broadcast on 1 November 2010, [5] documented the 1989 efforts of French authorities to find and arrest Touvier.

Brel connection

For several years, the Belgian singer Jacques Brel worked with Touvier. [6] Touvier met Brel by reportedly approaching him in a restaurant and saying, "I am Paul Touvier, a condemned man." [7] Brel's wife, however, said that they knew him only as "Paul Berthet", an alias which he sometimes used, based on his wife's maiden name. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice Papon</span> French policeman, politician, and Axis collaborator (1910–2007)

Maurice Papon was a French civil servant and Nazi collaborator who was convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the occupation of France. Papon led the police in major prefectures from the 1930s to the 1960s, before he became a Gaullist politician. When he was secretary general for the police in Bordeaux during World War II, he participated in the deportation of more than 1,600 Jews. He is also known for his activities in the Algerian War (1954–1962), during which he tortured insurgent prisoners as prefect of the Constantinois department, and ordered, as prefect of the Paris police, the 1961 massacre of pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) demonstrators for violating a curfew that he had "advised".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milice</span> Paramilitary force in Vichy France

The Milice française, generally called la Milice, was a political paramilitary organization created on 30 January 1943 by the Vichy régime to help fight against the French Resistance during World War II. The Milice's formal head was Vichy France's Prime Minister Pierre Laval, although its chief of operations and de facto leader was Secretary General Joseph Darnand. The Milice participated in summary executions and assassinations, helping to round up Jews and résistants in France for deportation. It was the successor to Darnand's Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL) militia. The Milice was the Vichy régime's most extreme manifestation of fascism. Ultimately, Darnand envisaged the Milice as a fascist single-party political movement for the French State.

<i>The Statement</i> (film) 2003 film by Norman Jewison

The Statement is a 2003 drama thriller film directed and produced by Norman Jewison, from a screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the 1996 novel by Brian Moore. It stars Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Northam, Alan Bates, William Hutt, John Neville and Charlotte Rampling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serge Klarsfeld</span> French jurist (born 1935)

Serge Klarsfeld is a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, he has made notable efforts to commemorate the Jewish victims of German-occupied France and has been a supporter of Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques de Bernonville</span> French collaborator

Count Jacques Charles Noel Dugé de Bernonville was a French collaborationist and senior police officer in the Milice of the Vichy regime in France. He was known to hunt down and execute resistance fighters during World War II, as well as for his participation in antisemitic programs, including the deportation of French Jews to Drancy and extermination camps. After his escape from France, he was convicted in absentia of war crimes and sentenced to death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georges Mandel</span> French journalist, politician, and French Resistance leader

Georges Mandel was a French Jewish journalist, and politician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippe Henriot</span> French politician and collaborationist (1889–1944)

Philippe Henriot was a French poet, journalist, politician, and Nazi collaborator who served as a minister in the French government at Vichy, where he directed propaganda broadcasts. He was assassinated by the Résistance in 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vel' d'Hiv Roundup</span> 1942 mass arrest and deportation of Jews in Paris, Vichy France

The Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup was a mass arrest of Jewish families in Paris on 16–17 July 1942 by French police and gendarmes at the behest of the German authorities. The roundup was one of several aimed at eradicating the Jewish population in France, in both the occupied zone and the free zone, that took place in 1942 as part of Opération Vent printanier. Planned by René Bousquet, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Theodor Dannecker and Helmut Knochen, it was the largest deportation of Jews from France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Basch</span> French politician

Basch Viktor Vilém, or Victor-Guillaume Basch was a French Jewish politician and professor of germanistics and philosophy at the Sorbonne descending from Hungary. He was engaged in the Zionist movement, in the Ligue des droits de l'homme and in Anti-Nazism.

<span title="French-language text"><i lang="fr">Épuration légale</i></span> French purge of collaborationists after WW2

The épuration légale was the wave of official trials that followed the Liberation of France and the fall of the Vichy regime. The trials were largely conducted from 1944 to 1949, with subsequent legal action continuing for decades afterward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">René Bousquet</span> French police chief (1909–1993)

René Bousquet was a high-ranking French political appointee who served as secretary general to the Vichy French police from May 1942 to 31 December 1943. For personal heroism, he had become a protégé of prominent officials before the war and had risen rapidly in the government.

<i>The Statement</i> (novel) 1995 novel by Brian Moore

The Statement (1995) is a thriller novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. Set in the south of France and Paris in the early 1990s, The Statement is the tale of Pierre Brossard, a former officer in the pro-fascist militia that served Vichy France and a murderer of Jews. The novel was published by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom in 1995 and by E.P. Dutton in the United States on 1 June 1996.

Abraham Salomon Glück was a French physician and a member of the French Resistance.

Philippe Laguérie is a French Traditionalist Catholic priest. He was the first Superior General of the Institute of the Good Shepherd, which upholds the Tridentine Mass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vichy France</span> Client state of Nazi Germany (1940–1942/4)

Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.

There have been several controversies surrounding the Society of St. Pius X, many of which concern political support for non-democratic regimes, alleged antisemitism, and the occupation of church buildings. The Society of St. Pius X is an international organisation founded in 1970 by the French traditionalist Catholic archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The Fédération nationale des déportés et internés résistants et patriotes is an organization founded by Marcel Paul and Henri Manhès in October 1945, five months after the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. The Federation carries on the legacy of those who perished in Nazi concentration camps or were interned in prisons in occupied France and unites survivors of the camps, prisons and the French Resistance. The federation also researches and exposes the war crimes of Nazism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort du Portalet</span> A fort in the French Pyrenees

The Fort du Portalet is a fort in the Aspe Valley in Bearn, French Pyrenees, built from 1842 to 1870.

Georges Glaeser was a French mathematician who was director of the IREM of Strasbourg. He worked in analysis and mathematical education and introduced Glaeser's composition theorem and Glaeser's continuity theorem. Glaeser was a Ph.D. student of Laurent Schwartz.

"Résistancialisme" is a neologism coined by historian Henry Rousso to describe exaggerated historical memory of the French Resistance during World War II. In particular, résistancialisme refers to exaggerated beliefs about the size and importance of the resistance and anti-German sentiment in German-occupied France in post-war French thinking.

References

  1. "Paul Touvier | French war criminal". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-10-12.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Morgan, Ted (October 1, 1989). "L'Affaire Touvier: Opening Old Wounds". The New York Times . New York City. Retrieved February 12, 2011.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Biography of Paul Touvier". www.chrd.lyon.fr (in French). Lyon, France: Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
  4. Angelus Online Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
  5. HistoryTelevision.ca Archived 2010-12-09 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Cordy, Jacques (25 March 1994). "Jacques Brel Berné par " Monsier Paul "". Le Soir (in French). Brussels, Belgium: Rossel & Cie, SA . Retrieved 13 February 2011.
  7. 1 2 "Love, life and crimes against humanity". On an Overgrown Path. January 27, 2010. Retrieved February 13, 2011.

Further reading