FRANCE: EVE OF WAR CRIMES TRIAL FOR VICHY OFFICIAL MAURICE PAPON

• published: 21 Jul 2015
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Eng/French/Nat Leading official of France's Vichy regime, Maurice Papon, will be charged, Wednesday, for complicity in crimes against humanity during World War II. Papon, will face charges of the arrest and deportation of 1-thousand 690 Jews from the Bordeaux region to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The trial is a unique opportunity for the French to face up to their wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany. Fifty years after the collapse of the Vichy regime, 87-year old Maurice Papon, one of the regime's leading officials, will answer to charges of crimes against humanity. It is alleged he committed these as a police supervisor in the Gironde region in southwestern France. Documents show his signature on forms ordering the arrest of Jews as late as 1944, even after the D-Day Allied landing in Normandy. Many thought Papon would never have his day in court - such was the level of protection enjoyed by top officials. Ex-President Mitterrand admitted he had intervened to stall the proceedings when charges were initially brought against Papon. This happened in 1981 when a Jewish historian whose family was deported on Papon's orders, stumbled across arrest orders signed by him. SOUNDBITE: (French) "We have a man charged (with crimes against humanity) it is Papon. Papon is responsible for the genocide in Bordeaux. He carries on his shoulders the responsibility of illegal and arbitrary arrests. During two years he took decisions on the life and death of the Jewish community. So he has to respond to that". SUPER CAPTION: Michael Slitinsky, Historian Of the estimated 76-thousand French Jews who were sent to Nazi death camps, about 2-thousand 500 survived. For many of them the memories of the deportation's are vivid. SOUNDBITE: (French) "On July 19th 1942, we were about to flee to the free zone. We were having our dinner, we were eating vegetables - peas - I can remember. Someone knocked at the door. We thought it was the person who was supposed to help us flee. But it was the French police, from that moment I have no other memory." SUPER CAPTION: Elaine Dommange, Plaintiff Archives show that Papon rewrote his wartime resume and played up his alleged actions on behalf of the French Resistance. This is how he avoided being brought to trial for so long. Lawyers for Papon say that he should not be used as an example, or as a way to try the French administration of the time. SOUNDBITE: (French) "One man has been chosen, one scapegoat to run a sacrificial prosecution which is a sacrifice aimed at helping people to live with their conscience for the behaviour of the generation or generations before them" SUPER CAPTION: Francis Vuillemin, defence lawyer In an attempt to establish Papon's moral credibility, the defence will call former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, his then prime minister, Raymond Barre and former Bordeaux Mayor Jacques Chaban-Delmas, a noted Resistance figure. But the prosecution say they will stick to the historical facts. Among them Papon's order in 1942 to track down and arrest 81 Jewish children, aged between two and 16. SOUNDBITE: (English) "Through his own intelligence, arrested the Jews, did his work the best he could, and was a piece of the machine, a high piece, a big piece, an important piece of the machine which took the Jews from France and arrested them in the privacy of their homes and who sent them to Auschwitz. In 48 hours, a Jewish child that was arrested in Bordeaux could be gassed at the other side of Europe, and he was a piece of that machinery, an important piece of that machinery. The Germans needed people like Papon to do that work." You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/9179c2bc290fd91c5c8ec03b747b0ae5 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork