His day of reckoning at hand, Maurice Papon reached the end ofhis Nazi war crimes trial much as he began it six months ago: as anold man in the dock, and a representative of something more.
To one of his accusers, the 87-year-old former official was'the symbol of the government bureaucrat' who in Nazi-occupiedFrance rubber-stamped hundreds of Jews to their doom. Papon remained'the emblem of Vichy' -- the name given to France's compliantwartime government.
In closing arguments due to end Wednesday, Papon's defenseattorney called the proceedings 'the last purge trial' of World WarII.Whatever the trial and the accused have grown to symbolizeafter all the testimony here, the multiple charges of crimes againsthumanity that Papon denies soon will go to a panel of jurors andjudges for what is expected to be a quick verdict. An acquittal isconsidered possible.'Memory, truth and justice are not incompatible,' Jean-MarcVaraut, Papon's lead defense attorney, said in closing arguments. Hetold the jury it was possible to 'convict Vichy' and still acquithis client.Papon is accused, in his role as a deputy prefect in theBordeaux region during the war, of signing orders leading to thearrest and deportation of 1,560 French Jews, almost all of whomeventually died at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.The chief prosecutor, Marc Robert, called Papon a'professional opportunist' who is representative of a generation ofFrench bureaucrats -- 'brilliant, efficient, without qualms, forwhom the duty to obey served as a code of moral conduct. . . . Paponwanted a career, at any price, and quickly.'The defendant, who is in poor health, has attended most of thenearly 100 sessions of the trial, sitting somberly behind aprotective Plexiglas shield, taking notes or listening, chin in hishand. Only rarely did he betray emotion, and never anythinginterpreted as regret or contrition. His wife of 66 years, Paulette,died last week.Papon is only the second Frenchman to stand trial for warcrimes since the kangaroo-court French purges of Nazi collaboratorsimmediately after the liberation of France. He wound up in thecourtroom in Bordeaux largely for reasons of longevity. His wartimeboss is dead, as are all the higher-ups in the collaborationistgovernment established in the mountain resort of Vichy after thehumiliating defeat of France by German forces.The defense pointed out repeatedly that Papon was targeted asa potential war crimes suspect in the first place because of thenotable public career that followed his wartime service in Bordeauxfrom 1942 to 1944, when he was in his early thirties. Papon waspromoted rapidly in the French civil service, eventually rising tobecome Paris police chief during most of the turbulent 1960s.When he was exposed in 1981, Papon was serving as budget ministerin the government of French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Therevelations in a French satirical paper, Le Canard Enchaine, cameonly days before Giscard's defeat by Francois Mitterrand in the 1981elections. Mitterrand's personal intervention delayed Papon's trialfor many of the 16 years before the proceeding that opened here inOctober. Before joining the French underground Resistance,Mitterrand, too, had served as a minor Vichy official.To the general charge that Papon signed deportation ordersthat carried French Jews, including 223 children, to their fateunder the Nazi 'final solution,' Varaut's defense team has arguedthat Papon was merely executing the orders of his superior, who washimself subject to pressures and commands originating in Berlin; andthat Papon knew nothing of the extermination camps or the fate ofthe deportees.At the same time, the defense also has argued that Papon wasactually braking the process and in some cases personallyintervening to save Jews.Former Resistance officials and historians have asserted thatPapon quietly served the Resistance by passing along informationhelpful to the underground guerrilla movement directed by Charles deGaulle from the Free French governments in Algiers and London.Such testimony has clouded the picture of what Papon did anddid not do as secretary general of the Gironde department. The job,which ranked second in the central French administration of thissouthwestern province, included supervision of the local office of'Jewish questions,' the Nazi-ordered apartheid regime for Jews.Documentary evidence from the period is ambiguous orconflicting. While contemporary witnesses are virtually nonexistent,the testimony in Bordeaux has given jurors room for doubt aboutPapon's actions and motivations, as well as the depth of hispersonal responsibility for what sometimes were called 'statecrimes' or 'collective crimes.'Sensing the jury's and the public's gnawing sympathy forPapon, even one of the most vociferous lawyers representing thefamilies of the victims, Arno Klarsfeld, suggested that a sentenceshort of life imprisonment was 'equitable' under the circumstances.The suggestion outraged some of Klarsfeld's colleagues.The trial has been amply covered in the French media,occasioning soul-searching and debates about culpability for thedeportation of more than 75,000 Jews from occupied France by theirfellow citizens.One rightist political leader complained about the'self-flagellation' of the French nation implied in the judicialprosecution of crimes committed more than a half-century ago.Meanwhile, both President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister LionelJospin have spoken of the need to acknowledge French complicity inthe genocide of Jews.'Yes, there were arrests, roundups, convoys organized with theconcurrence of the French administration,' Chirac declared inDecember. 'This should be said and understood.'In a poll taken last week, 83 percent of respondents said theyhad followed the Papon trial in the news media; 82 percent said ithad taught them little new about France's wartime past.Papon has been a silent, spectral presence behind glass and asturdy witness when on the stand, but his indignation erupted onoccasion. When a lawyer for one of the civil parties to theprosecution described Papon's moral 'indifference' as a publicofficial, including his responsibility for alleged police killingsof hundreds of Algerian demonstrators in Paris in 1961, Paponexploded.'You are a liar!' Papon cried.The presiding judge, Jean-Louis Castagnede, had to shout Paponinto silence. The lawyer, resuming, observed that 'something musthave touched Maurice Papon . . . something about his responsibilitygot to him.' Papon, rising unsteadily to his feet, shot back, 'Youare a calumniator!'
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