The Jewish community is protesting vigorously against a government decision that would delay indefinitely the prosecution of a high-ranking Nazi collaborator allegedly responsible for the deportation of Jews.
Although the man is slated to go on trial, the state prosecutor decided Monday that Rene Bousquet, the 81-year-old former secretary-general of the Vichy police, will be tried by a special court, the High Court of Justice.
The High Court was dissolved in 1954, reportedly on the belief that there were no further Nazis to bring to trial, and it is now said that it will require several years of preparation before a trial of Bousquet could open.
Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, the lawyer whose investigation led to charges against Bousquet, accused the prosecution of employing “a tactic to sidestep the issue and avoid bringing a high-ranking French official to court.”
The decision was also protested by Georges Kiejman, the new deputy minister of justice, whose parents died in the concentration camps.
Bousquet, as No. 2 man in the Vichy Ministry of Interior, controlled the police, which collaborated with the Nazi conquerors of France in World War II.
Tried after the war on charges of collaboration, he was given a token six-month sentence, which was suspended in consideration of his reputed assistance to the French Resistance.
Bousquet, who retired two years ago after becoming a wealthy banker and president of one of France’s largest corporations, always contended that he secretly helped countless resistance fighters avoid capture by the Gestapo while pretending to collaborate.
Klarsfeld charged that recently discovered documents show Bousquet actively helped the Nazis in the notorious mass arrest of Jews for deportation in 1942.
Klarsfeld and other Jewish leaders observed that while France is willing to try German war criminals, it resists opening “the door of the closet in which hang the skeletons of French collaboration at the highest political level.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
