A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #361 - THE PAPON TRIAL: A Story of Ordinary Disgrace in the Service of the State (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Between July 1942 and May 1944, 1,690 people of Jewish origin, including 
223 children, were arrested and transferred from Bordeaux to Auschwitz, 
via Drancy, where most were exterminated upon arrival. --- On October 
18, 1997, Maurice Papon, aged 87, Secretary General at the time of the 
events of the Gironde Prefecture located in the occupied zone, appeared 
before the Gironde Assize Court, charged with "complicity in crimes 
against humanity" for his active participation in organizing eight of 
the ten convoys in question-those for which the victims or their heirs 
had filed civil suits, as it was they who initiated the public 
prosecution in December 1981 in the face of the deafening silence of the 
Public Prosecutor's Office, even though the Left had been back in power 
since the previous May, and Robert Badinter was Minister of Justice.

This trial, which lasted six months, unlike the trials of SS officer 
Barbie (1987) and militiaman Touvier (1994), was that of an ordinary 
high-ranking civil servant, imbued with his sense of duty, convinced in 
these exceptional circumstances that he had acted in the name of the 
State. In his position, he always felt he was simply doing his duty, and 
to the very end, he maintained this awareness of duty fulfilled. In the 
name of the orders he received, he could ignore the inhumanity of the 
acts committed. He was managing his career.

On April 2, 1998, he was found guilty of the arrests and detentions, but 
not of complicity in murder-the jury determined he was unaware of the 
Final Solution, while the case file and the six months of hearings 
demonstrated the contrary-for four of the eight convoys. He was 
consequently sentenced for "complicity in crimes against humanity" to 
ten years' imprisonment and the loss of his civil, civic, and family rights.

His appeal was rejected, and he was sent to La Santé prison, but only 
for three years. He was released on medical grounds that proved 
unfounded and died peacefully in 2007 at the age of 96.

His conviction, however, marked the end of immunity for this 
technocratic elite who believed themselves invested with a mission: to 
act in the name of the State, thereby ensuring them the sovereign 
privilege of irresponsibility. Yet, given the national-authoritarian 
regime that prevailed between 1940 and 1944 in Vichy France, a co-author 
of exclusion and an accomplice in extermination, the duty of 
disobedience should have taken precedence over reasons of State.

It must be said and repeated forcefully, as Jacques Fénimore (in the 
journal "Le Passant Ordinaire") urged us to do in October 1997:

"No totalitarian regime can come to power and maintain itself without a 
multitude of small acts of cowardice, compromises, defections, 
betrayals, renunciations, or acts of obedience by men and women, like 
you and me, from the humblest citizen to the highest-ranking official. 
No, it is not because there was Hitler or Pétain that we had men like 
Papon, but because there were thousands of men like Papon that we had 
Hitler and Pétain." With his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Étienne 
de La Boétie is more relevant than ever:

"Power is imposed only by the sole consent of those over whom it is 
exercised."

JEAN-JACQUES GANDINI

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4732
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