Reflections on the Trial of Vichy Collaborator Paul Touvier for Crimes against Humanity in France

Abstract

On 20 April 1994, in Versailles France, Paul Touvier was convicted of complicity to commit crimes against humanity for his role in the killing of seven Jews during World War II. At the time of the crime Touvier was an oficer of the Milice, a special military force established to combat the Resistance and other enemies of the Vichy government. When Touvier's trial was finally held in spring 1994, it was the subject of enormous media attention in France and became the vehicle for a debate on the legitimacy and activities of the Vichy Regime, becoming popularly identified as a trial of the Vichy government. This essay, after tracing the historical and legal background of Touvier's prosecution, concludes that Touvier's conviction some 50 years after his crime, was legally and morally justified. Touvier's evasion of the law was remedied; his victims and their descendants were honored; the Nuremberg principles were resurrected and applied. The author is skeptical, however, about using his trial to reexamine the Vichy period and suggests that its attempted transformation by the media into an event that would produce an authoritative resolution of the various public discourses concerning Vichy France was and could only have been a disappointment.