Memories of Assassins, Assassins of Memory: Recent French Struggles with the Past

In June of last year Rene Bousquet, former general secretary of the interior and chief of the Vichy police, was murdered in the doorway of his Paris apartment. His death was the ultimate postponement of a long-delayed trial for crimes against humanity, scheduled to begin sometime this year. Had it taken place, it might have provided the opportunity to publicly put the Vichy regime on trial and openly discuss the involvement of the French administration in anti-Jewish laws and in the deportations of the Jews to the Nazi death camps. However, the incident was only the last chapter in the story of how Bousquet was able to escape justice for so long. Initially charged with organizing the Jewish roundups, Bousquet was absolved by the High Court in 1949, going on to become a successful banker and journalist. Indeed, his long-standing association with President Francois Mitterrand may explain the many obstacles placed in the way of a new trial, which those who have documented his activities, like the lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, began to demand in the late 1970s.

The Bousquet story underscores the fact that France continues to be uniquely haunted by the problem of history and memory. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the widely shared myth of a national resistance to Nazi barbarism was able to keep fiercely competing memories of the Occupation and the Liberation from erupting into public awareness.

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