Nazi Collaborator Dies
February 18, 2007
Papon died Saturday in a hospital in the eastern Paris suburbs, four days after he underwent heart surgery. He was 96.
"I will personally see to it that the cross of the commander of the Legion of Honor that was bestowed to him by Charles de Gaulle, for eternity, be placed with him in his casket," lawyer Francis Vuillemin said in a statement.
Papon was stripped of France's highest distinction, which he received as Paris police chief personally from de Gaulle in 1962, by decree in November 1999 as is the case for any appointee to the Legion who is convicted of a crime.
Guilty of crimes against humanity
A senior official under the wartime Vichy government, Papon was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1998 for his role in organizing the deportation of hundreds of Jews to Nazi Germany, where most of them died in extermination camps.
He was the only French Nazi official to be convicted of a crime for his role in deporting French Jews during World War Two. Papon said he was unaware of the Holocaust at the time and used his position in the Vichy government to aid the French Resistance.
During the six-month trial, the longest in French history, Papon came to symbolize France's collaboration with the Nazis.
He was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity after the court rejected his plea that he was a civil servant following instructions from above. His release from Paris' La Sante prison in 2002 on medical grounds angered Jewish groups, who said that at his trial he never expressed sorrow for the victims of his bureaucratic zeal.
The 1998 verdict came after President Jacques Chirac had for the first time acknowledged French responsibility in the Jewish genocide, and appeared to confirm a new willingness to face up to the country's wartime past.
No remorse for crimes
One of the lawyers representing the victims during the trial said the Nazi collaborator went to his grave without ever feeling remorseful for his actions.
"We never succeeded in bringing the henchman back to humanity," Gerard Boulanger told the AFP news service. "Maurice Papon never understood and never admitted to what he had done."
For Juliette Benzazon, 77, who lost 12 family members under the deportation orders, Papon was also unrepentant to the end.
"He was a man who did not want to recognize what he had done, who did not want to ask forgiveness from us or from the Grand rabbi," she told AFP. "He had no regrets, he said he was a civil servant."
Vuillemin said Papon's family had yet to set a date for the funeral. Papon is survived by three children: Aline, Alain and Muriel.