Maurice Papon, the French bureaucrat supreme whose signature
is on transportation orders that sent 1,690 Jews (including 223 children) to
their deaths in Nazi extermination camps, is now 90 years old. The bearer of a
pacemaker, survivor of triple-bypass surgery, he was imprisoned only a year or
so ago because he managed to evade capture, using legal appeal after appeal
(falling through loopholes, a trapeze artist, manipulator of systems, friend of
those in high places) to avoid conviction for more than a decade. His aborted
escape to Switzerland and subsequent extradition resulted in his present placement
in La Santé prison, where he resides in fragile health. We are told that his
appeals to the European Court of Human Rights for pardon have stirred a sharp
debate, pouring a sea’s worth of salt into some old wounds. Mr. Papon’s wartime
role as a Vichy official responsible for Jewish affairs in the Bordeaux region
from 1942-44 led to a successful postwar career. He became budget minister and
later chief of police in Paris under de Gaulle, where it seems likely that he
ordered the reprisal murder, in 1961, of several dozen Algerians whose bodies
were then dumped into the Seine.
Today, a cadre of supporters write letters on Mr. Papon’s
behalf. They argue that the punishment for crimes against humanity is not
another crime, the persecution of the elderly, the withholding of compassion
for one whose deeds were done in another atmosphere, under pressure of the
conqueror’s will, far back in the mists of history.
Granted, this is not a man most of us would invite to
dinner. However, the argument now is not over his innocence or guilt, nor over
the indecency of the Vichy rule, but rather the degree and kind of justice the
victims can ever hope to achieve by putting this old man in a cell almost 60
years after his crime. The argument now turns on either the bitter taste of
vengeance that presents itself as justice, or the equally bitter taste of mercy
which, while it might bring Mr. Papon back into the sunlight for his remaining
days, will not seem merciful to the memories of those he packed into cattle
cars.
The first thing to be said is that no one alive today can
forgive this man his cruelty or his murderous, opportunistic collaboration. But
his victims are gone and cannot excuse his acts or encourage his release, and
no one else can forgive him in their place. But because he cannot be forgiven
does not mean that he must stay in prison until death comes for him, too, as it
will soon.
The argument being made in Paris is that he is so old and
harmless that it serves no purpose to deprive him of the comforts of his home
in his last days. There is also attached to this argument-holding it up like a
flagpole-the sense that the collaborators in France were so numerous, the guilt
thereby spread so thinly, that it is unfair to assign it to a single face, a
mere signature on a transportation paper. Mr. Papon’s supporters do not want to
be tarred with the Holocaust responsibility, which in fact belongs to so many
among the anti-Semitic French population.
After the war, it seemed like everyone in France was a
member of the Resistance. Only slowly did we discover how many profited from
their German neighbors’ brief visit, how many agreed with the anti-Semitism
that ran riot in the newspapers, universities, cafés and clubs. Only gradually
did we understand that the French had been liberated of their Jews by the
Germans and then liberated from the Germans by the Americans. The difference
between Eichmann and Papon can be measured in numbers but not in kind.
The counterargument is that we cannot release every old
prisoner. Ax murderers, con men, rapists grow old but not better of character,
not deserving of freedom. If Mr. Papon hadn’t delayed justice by doing so many
somersaults through the system, he would have been imprisoned earlier and
perhaps released by now. The other counterargument is that the crime of
rounding up Jewish children hidden in homes around Bordeaux is too ugly to be
swept under the rug with statements like “Those were different days” or “Who
knew who would win the war?”
The Papon story brings us right to the dilemma of Holocaust
justice: It can’t be achieved. It has eluded us. So many vicious men survived,
having been funneled through various underground railways, absorbed into
offices and governments that needed them for industry’s sake, for anti-Communist reasons-so many men who,
with their own hands or through their own orders, arranged for the deaths of
millions of innocents and went on with their lives. It may make us shake our
fists at the sky, but there is nothing to be done. We cannot begin to count the
numbers of war criminals who have lived among us. There will be no justice
after the Holocaust, which is part of the pain of it, a pain we cannot avoid.
There will be no revenge.
Whether he is released or not, Mr. Papon will die, content
that he got away with it for so long. Sometime in the near future, the Jews of
the contemporary world will have to accept that the Europeans will always admit
little, blame others. Guilt is a hard, unpleasant burden, and no group of
people wants it; no individual will bear it as long as one can distort the
past, and one’s role in it. And this is what will happen-has already happened.
There is Mr. Papon-old and shriveled, heart skipping beats-in a cell, but he’s
there too late, beyond punishment for his deeds. We are approaching the moment
when we will simply have to stop yearning for justice, for some apology that
will never come-certainly not in time to save a single soul. Can we even
protect ourselves from another round of persecution? Probably not. Certainly
not by fanning the flames of guilt.
So ultimately the facts of the Holocaust will recede into
history, another terrible story among many, and no one who suffered will be
around. Nor will anyone whose hands are bloodied. The books and photographs
will remain as a cautionary tale, probably ignored.
I would prefer that Mr. Papon breathe his last breath in
prison. I am not a good enough person to wish him a soft pillow in his own bed,
but I know that war criminals the world over-African generals, Afrikaaner
police officers, Serbian presidents-slip away and drink good wines served to
them on silver trays while sitting on terraces overlooking the bluest waters in
ports of call on every continent. So it is.
