Paul Touvier

Paul Touvier (born April 3, 1915 in Saint-Vincent-sur-Jabron , Alpes-de-Haute-Provence , † July 17, 1996 in Fresnes , Val-de-Marne ) was a French police officer who, due to his collaboration was convicted of crimes against humanity with the Germans in the persecution of the Jews .

Life

Touvier comes from a strict Catholic family from Savoy . At the age of 16 he left the institution of Saint-François-de-Sales to become an expedition merchant at PLM in Ambérieux . Already on the eve of the Second World War, Touvier was widowed early. In the 8th North African Infantry Division he took part in World War II, but escaped during the bombing of Château-Thierry . When he returned to Chambéry in 1940 , it was occupied by Italian troops.

Since he sympathized with the ideas of Marshal Philippe Pétain , the head of government of Vichy France , he joined the Légion française des combattants (French war veteran legion), which in 1941 Joseph Darnand joined the Service d'ordre légionnaire (German: Ordnungsdienst the Legion) and in 1942 the Milice française was convicted. The Milice française was a militia of the Vichy regime that collaborated with the German occupiers and was dedicated to the persecution of its own compatriots, the partisans of the Resistance .

Touvier's ability as a police officer was discovered at the Uriage militia school . He quickly rose to the post of chief of the militia in the region, to which ten departments were assigned. Soon the political police were also subordinate to him. He ordered the persecution of the Jews and the repression against the Resistance . The murder of the Jews was a personal concern of his. Touvier was later appointed head of the secret service at the Milice in Chambéry under the direction of the Gestapo chief of Lyons , Klaus Barbie , interrogated those arrested, conducted raids , led the infiltration of the Resistance, stole the assets of the deportees and became number two in January 1944 the regional administration of the Vichy regime.

Towards the end of the German occupation, Touvier frequently visited the abbot Stéphane Vautherin , who had chosen the collaboration . After the liberation of France by the Allies, Touvier went into hiding in September 1944 and was temporarily nicknamed "Trichet". On September 10, 1946, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the French court with jurisdiction over treason in Lyon . The same judgment was given by the Chambéry Court on March 4, 1947. In 1947 he was arrested in Paris while attempting an armed robbery on a bakery. During interrogation, his friends, including Vautherin, shared his two death sentences. Touvier was then transported to Lyon for execution , but was able to escape. He managed to go into hiding through several churches and monasteries until his trace was lost. In August 1947 he married in secret, married by the prison pastor Pierre Duben . The couple had a girl in 1948 and a boy in 1950. In the 1950s, Touvier hid under a false name at his family's seat in Chambéry. When danger threatened again, he again went into hiding in various monasteries in Savoy. In 1959 he also met Jacques Brel .

In 1966, his death sentence expired after 20 years. On behalf of Jean-Marie Villot , the Archbishop of Lyons , his lawyers sought a pardon or lifting of the lifelong ban on leaving the country and the confiscation of his property related to his death sentence . When President Georges Pompidou pardoned him in 1971, it sparked an outcry among the public, especially after it was revealed that he had in fact stolen most of the property he had claimed from deported Jews.

On July 3, 1973, a lawsuit against Touvier was brought before the Lyon court for crimes against humanity by Georges Glaeser . Glaeser accused Touvier of ordering the murder of seven Jewish hostages in Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon on June 29, 1944 in retaliation for the fatal attack on Philippe Henriot , the propaganda minister of the Vichy regime. After the indictment was opened, Touvier disappeared again. He found shelter in the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault , among other places . Years of legal battles from his attorneys bought him time before an arrest warrant was issued against him on November 27, 1981 . Only on May 24, 1989 was Touvier found in his hiding place, a priory of the Pius Brotherhood in Nice . After his arrest, it came to light that right-wing Catholic priests, especially in the Lyon region, had been helping him for years. Touvier had identification papers in the name of "Paul Perthet" at the address of the Archbishop of Lyon , had frequently changed hiding places up to the Pas-de-Calais department and was dependent on the funding of right-wing Catholic circles, the "Chevaliers de Notre-Dame “Called. This had not escaped the attention of gendarmerie officer Jean-Louis Recordon . He followed the trail of the money and obtained judicial permits to monitor the telephone , which ultimately led to the capture of Touvier after an adventurous 43-year escape.

In addition to being charged with the murder of seven Jewish citizens, Touvier was suspected of having played an important role in the execution of the prominent human rights activist Victor Basch and his wife Hélène, and of having been involved in the deportation of other Jewish citizens. During the next two years that Touvier was imprisoned, 20 other indictments were brought against him by individuals and associations.

Touvier was provisionally released in July 1991. His trial for complicity in crimes against humanity began on March 17, 1994. A jury of nine jurors found guilty on April 20, and he was sentenced to life in prison . His appeal was rejected by the court in 1995.

On July 17, 1996, Touvier died of prostate cancer in the hospital in Fresnes prison near Paris. His funeral was in the Paris church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet by priests of the Society of St. Pius X. celebrated.

Brian Moore's novel The Statement (German title: Hetzjagd ) is loosely based on what happened. The book was in 2003 with Michael Caine in the role of collaborator Pierre Brossard filmed .

See also

• Klaus Barbie
• Maurice Papon

literature

• René Rémond: Paul Touvier et l'Église. Fayard, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-213-02880-X .
• Michèle Cointet (Ed.): Dictionnaire historique de la France sous l'Occupation. Tallandier, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-235-02234-0 .
• Jacques Trémolet de Villiers: Paul Touvier est innocent. Dominique Martin Morin, Bouère 1990, ISBN 978-2-85652-130-4 .
• Walther Flekl: Art. Affaires Barbie / Bousquet / Touvier / Papon. In: Bernhard Schmidt (Ed.): Frankreich-Lexikon. 2nd Edition. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-503-06184-3 , pages 39-45.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Touvier in the catalog of the German National Library
• Paul Touvier. In: Trial Watch . March 30, 2005, archived from the original on May 7, 2005 . 
• Joseph Rovan : The trial against Paul Touvier sheds light on the involvement of the French church in the collaboration with the Nazis: A little helper of the Hitler regime. In: Zeit Online . March 25, 1994 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Cornelius Stiegemann: Wrong doctor, real murderer: Jean-Claude Romand goes to the monastery. In: kathisch.de . July 7, 2019, accessed July 8, 2017 .