Touvier Maintains That Death of 7 Jews Saved Dozens of Others from Same Fate

About midway through the first trial of a French citizen for crimes against humanity during World War II, the defendant, Paul Touvier, has continued to adhere to his line of defense:

Thanks to his actions, he has maintained, the lives of dozens of Jews were spared in exchange for the lives of seven.

Touvier, former head of the intelligence service of the French pro-Nazi militia in Lyon, has already admitted that on June 29, 1944, he personally picked seven Jewish hostages and had them executed in retaliation for the assassination the previous day of Philippe Henriot, the minister of propaganda of the French Vichy regime.

But Touvier, who turned 79 this week, has maintained during the trial at the Versailles Court of Justice that Werner Knab, the Gestapo commander of the Lyon area, was about to kill 100 Jewish hostages in retaliation for the murder of Henriot.

Touvier testified that after haggling with Knab, the Gestapo official had agreed to lower the figure to 30, and then to seven Jews. But he also said that, ultimately, the Gestapo never ordered the execution of the seven Jews; that, Touvier said, he did on his own.

The distinction is an important one. Touvier is trying to distance himself from any direct involvement with the Nazis. For Touvier to be found guilty of crimes against humanity, it must be shown that he took his orders from the Nazi occupiers, who had elimination of the Jews as its policy.

Since France has never officially sanctioned the notion that the Vichy government had an anti-Semitic policy in line with that of the Nazis, the Vichy regime and all its related organizations can be found guilty only of war crimes, not crimes against humanity.

Thus, if it is shown that Touvier, a member of the Vichy militia, acted on his own, he could only be found guilty of war crimes. The statute of limitations for war crimes, however, has already expired.

TRIAL PAYS SCANT ATTENTION TO VICHY

The trial has so far focused almost exclusively on Touvier’s actions, with little attention paid to the role the collaborationist Vichy regime played during the war.

Only one witness, Columbia University historian Robert Paxton, has so far taken the stand to charge the Vichy government with collusion with the Nazis.

But Touvier’s lawyer, Jacques Tremolet de Villers, attempted to undercut Paxton’s testimony by stating that a historian, who often relies on documents stored in archives, is not the same as a witness to actual events.

Touvier was condemned to death twice in 1946 and 1947 for war crimes, but he managed to elude French authorities. He subsequently took shelter in various French convents and monasteries until then President Georges Pompadour pardoned him in November 1972.

Touvier emerged from hiding, but Jewish and French veterans groups initiated charges against French veterans groups initiated charges against him of crimes against humanity, a charge that is not subject to the statute of limitations and for which pardons do not apply.

Touvier went into hiding again, but was arrested when he was discovered in May 1989 hiding out in a Nice monastery.

The only person brought to trial in France before now for crimes against humanity was Klaus Barbie, the German Gestapo police chief in Lyon. Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987. He died in jail of cancer in 1991.

During the trial, Touvier has insisted that he was not anti-Semitic and knew nothing about the deportation of Jews from France.

But last week, the presiding judge at the trial, Henri Boulard, read from a notebook kept by Touvier in the 1980s in which he described two prominent French women as “Jewish garbage” and a French writer as a “sinister Jewish merchant.”

In response, Touvier said he had kept the notebook “for amusement.” He also said that a collection of Vichy documents and Nazi paraphernalia found among his possessions in 1989 were just items he had gathered to resell to collectors.