Continuation of Papon Trial Linked to Defendant’s Health

Lawyers for Holocaust victims and their families are accusing Maurice Papon of using his health as an excuse to delay his trial for crimes against humanity.

Angry protests were sounded Monday after the judge again suspended the proceedings after the former Vichy official was hospitalized for 10 days with double pneumonia.

The latest delay came as the proceedings were about to focus on Papon’s role in organizing convoys that took Jews to internment camps, the last stop before they were sent to death camps.

Lawyers for the civil plaintiffs voiced frustration that after weeks of hearing character witnesses for the defense, historians of the period and lengthy discussions of Papon’s administrative power, hearing about the very acts he is accused of will be postponed.

“The roundups, the transports, the deportations are the raw material of this trial.

“When will we finally begin to hear the cries of the victims who suffered under his power?” said Gerard Boulanger, the lawyer who first filed charges against Papon in 1981.

Papon, 87, was admitted Monday to the Haut Leveque Hospital outside the southwest city of Bordeaux after doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia in both lungs.

Presiding Judge Jean-Louis Castagnede ordered the trial suspended until Nov. 27 and appointed a medical expert to report on Papon’s state of health and on when he would be able to return to court.

Under French law, a suspect may only be tried in absentia if his or her absence is voluntary.

Papon stands accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews – – 223 of them children — when he was secretary-general of the Bordeaux prefect’s office and head of its Service for Jewish Questions in 1942-1944, in Nazi-occupied France.

Papon’s latest ailment follows a string of delays in the trial because of various illnesses, including a severe bronchial infection that kept him hospitalized for eight days last month.

The suspensions, which are likely to make the trial run into February or March instead of ending on Dec. 23 as initially planned, angered lawyers for the prosecution and their clients, most of whom are relatives of Jews deported from Bordeaux.

“Papon presents himself as the victim of some sort of Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. A lot of people are starting to think of him as a poor old sick man,” said lawyer Dominique Delthel, who is representing families of Holocaust victims.

“But there were also the old sick people he deported to Auschwitz who were gassed, and the children and the mothers and fathers,” he said.

Delthel’s remarks highlighted the difficulty of holding a trial more than 50 years after the alleged crimes were committed in a country whose collaborationist past was long obscured by the Gaullist myth that all of France resisted the Nazis.

His wartime conduct unknown or ignored, Papon enjoyed an illustrious post-war career — as Paris police chief from 1958-1967 and as budget minister from 1978-1981 — until a newspaper published documents linking him to the deportation of Jews.

Papon now maintains that he used his position in Bordeaux to help the anti-Nazi resistance and save Jewish lives.

Some who were dismayed at the new delay accused him of stalling whenever the trial began to delve into his role in handing over the Jews of Bordeaux to the Nazis.

“Each time Maurice Papon has to confront his responsibilities, we are confronted with a man who has fallen ill,” said Jackie Alisvaks, a civil plaintiff who was arrested by French police during the war, but managed to escape from a Bordeaux detention camp. His parents, however, were sent to Auschwitz.

The court had been due this week to hear a surprise witness who wrote to the judge two weeks ago asking to testify.

Christiane Hipolitte worked as a secretary for Bordeaux’s Service for Jewish Questions when Papon was in charge of the office.

With most witnesses of the period now dead, her testimony could be vital in determining whether Papon indeed delivered the orders that sent Jews to their deaths.