France's conspiracy of silence

Maurice Papon, who died last week, was the only senior government official in the Vichy regime to be convicted in France for his collaboration with the Nazis. It's hard to believe, but this is a fact. In occupied France and in the region known as the "non-occupied" area, where the Vichy regime ruled, there were hundreds if not thousands of senior government officials who collaborated with Nazi Germany. And this is without mentioning the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of collaborators from other sectors.

Only one man was convicted, and this was only due to his role in transferring 1,690 Jews, including 223 children, from the Bordeaux area to the Drancy internment camp, from which they were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Had these events not occurred, Maurice Papon who served as Gironde's general secretary for the Vichy regime would have ended his life without any trial or conviction.

France, including almost all of its governments and presidents since WWII, simply preferred ignoring the period of occupation between 1940 and 1945 and the fact that so many French nationals served the French occupier in both parts of France. The French simply decided to "forget" this period.

President Chirac was the first to declare in 1995 that France was indeed responsible for the criminal acts of collaboration with the Germans such as the ones Papon was charged with. Yet even this declaration, which naturally generated much interest and various responses in France, did not change a thing regarding the French attitude.

No regret

The trial of Papon, who was accused in 1981 after Jewish journalist Michel Slitinsky found documents signed by Papon attesting to the arrest and transfer of Jews from the Bordeaux area to Drancy (including the journalist's father,) commenced 16 years later, in 1997. Papon's attorneys succeeded in postponing the trial over and over again, and when it finally began, Papon was 86 years-old.

In the trial itself, which lasted six months, not only did Papon not admit to any guilt, he claimed that he in fact had been active in saving many Jews. He also argued that he should be treated with respect because he was a member of the French Resistance that fought the Nazi German occupation. The truth is that with the invasion of the allied troops into Normandy in the spring of 1944 - when it was clear that the German occupation was coming to an end - Papon looked for some type of a connection with the Résistance, as did thousands of other French nationals.

This belated connection with the underground movement helped him later on: Everyone was convinced that he did indeed fight the Germans. Papon made his way from one senior post to another until his appointment to the post of Paris' police chief in 1958, advocated by President de Gaulle who viewed him as a patriot. He completed his tenure in 1967, left the government service, and joined politics, later becoming the budget minister.

In 1981, during Papon's tenure as minister, the Jewish journalist discovered the incriminating documents that led to Papon's conviction. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The man who never expressed his regret for his acts and who argued that he was innocent, was incarcerated in 1999 at 88 years of age. He was released three years later due to his ailing health. Now, at 96, he is dead.