Rene Bousquet

An exemplary beginning of career

Wire of a notary radical socialist of Montauban, lawyer, it takes his first functions as principal private secretary of the prefect of the Tarn-et-Garonne.

In March 1930, during terrible floods which devastate the South-west, he becomes a national hero when with a friend (which will perish) he saves drowning personally several tens of people. The president Gaston Doumergue then decreed the title of chevalier of the Legion of Honor and the Gold medal of the beautiful actions to him.

Shining senior official, brooded by the radical socialism of the senator and his brother and press baron (the Dispatch of the South) Maurice Sarraut Albert Sarraut (appointed, president of the council and minister under IIIe Republic), it is detached with the Presidency of the Council in order to direct the engineering service in charge of the rebuilding of the departments disaster victims of the South.

Is only 22 years old, it is assistant chief of cabinet of Pierre Cathala Minister (radical) for the Interior.

In 1933, he is sub-prefect.

In 1935, he is managing director of the cabinet of the Minister for Agriculture.

In 1936, Roger Salengro, Minister of Interior Department of the Popular front, entrusts the responsibility for the central data base to him to the National security.

In April 1938, Albert Sarraut, Minister of Interior Department, appoints it sub-prefect of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne

In 1939, Rene Bousquet becomes general secretary of the prefecture of Châlons-sur-Marne. Then Prefect of the Marne, in 1940, after the armistice.

31 years old, he is then regional prefect (young person of France) in September 1941 where he is distinguished by maintaining in function the radical elected officials and freemasons (he itself had been initiated), which is worth to him to be the target of the gibes of I am everywhere. He also supports the escape from certain prisoners of war and manages to save the economic colonization of the Marne by the Nazi Germany.

In 1942, the admiral François Darlan, proposes to him the ministries for the Supply and the Agriculture which he refuses by twice.

In April 1942, at the exact moment when the S take, in occupied zone, the responsibility for the maintenance of law and order, Pierre Laval, names it with the general secretary with the police force with general delegation and permanent of signature of the chief of the government. The major part of the deportations took place at the time of the presence of the Bousquet technocrat to the head of the police force, in 1942-1943 (60 000 off-set Jews, against 15.000 in 1944).

General secretary of the police force of Vichy

See also: police collaboration under Vichy

Committing itself maintaining the “law and order”, Rene Bousquet obtained the end of the direct subordination of the French police force to the German occupant and a little autonomy, while agreeing to better satisfy them of sound (letter of the June 18th 1942 addressed to Karl Oberg, chief of the S in France). He also obtained that all the police services are joined together under its orders contrary to the wishes of the general police chief to the Jewish Questions Louis Darquier de Pellepoix of which he removed the antijuive police force thus.

Oberg will rent thereafter the technical effectiveness of Rene Bousquet, approved by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the central Office of safety of Reich, which had concluded with the glance from its experiment “that a broad autonomy of the police force and administration would carry out the best results”.

Rene Bousquet also negotiated with the persons in charge of the German police force an agreement (known under the name of “Oberg-Bousquet”) which was actually a unilateral “declaration” of Oberg, presented the August 8th 1942 in front of all the regional prefects. The chief of the S then recognized theoretically the “independence” of the police force and the national police, which were not to more be obliged to provide hostages, nor people stopped by the French. However, three days later, following the assassination of 8 Germans, the French police force had to deliver 70 French hostages, that the occupants carried out (including 57 decrees by the French for offenses of opinion: propaganda brochure distribution, assistance with the escaped prisoners, suspicion of Communism…).

The July 2nd 1942, Rene Bousquet and Karl Oberg organize the preparation of the arrests of the July 16th and 17th, in the Paris region (Rafle of the Cycle-racing track of Winter). In exchange of the adjournment of the deportations of French Jews (that the Germans however guaranteed by no written promise nor even verbal), Rene Bousquet proposed “to make stop the foreign Jews in all France”. This engagement of Rene Bousquet to ensure the execution of the raids of foreign Jews will be approved, the July 3rd, by Pierre Laval. It followed the arrest of more than 13.000 Jews in Paris on July 16th, 1942 and of approximately 10.000 Jews through the Southern Zone on August 26th. And thus France was the only country of Europe in which Jews remaining in a territory nonoccupied by the Germans were off-set.

In order to increase the output of the great raid envisaged the August 26th 1942, Bousquet of its own initiative communicated to the prefects new instructions cancelling the preceding regulations, which put at the shelter arrests certain categories of children. From now on, those of less than 18 years and the fathers and the mothers having a child of less than 5 years are not saved any more.

The August 22nd, it recommends to the prefects to prevail against the civils servant lacking zeal.

Disappointed by the result of the great raid, it communicates to the prefects the August 30th in order to draw their attention to this significant difference between the number of Jews listed foreigners and the number of decrees. It orders the continuation and the intensification of the police operations in progress. Certain children, taken refuge in hearths after the arrest of their parents, on August 26th, were thus recovered by the police officers French and off-set in Germany.

Following the raids made by the Germans in Zone known as " Libre" , carried out in the camps of internment managed by the administration of the Vichy government, during the summer 1942, some bishops and cardinals protested. But Rene Bousquet made them conceal while threatening to remove their subsidies and the special fiscal advantages of the Catholic schools. This argumentation will be taken again directly by Laval.

In September 1942, it receives a message of the Jewish Central Consistory " explaining that it was established by accurate informations and concordant that several hundreds of thousands of Jews were massacred in Eastern Europe or there died following bad traitements". It does not seem to have reacted there in any manner.

Under pretext of not separate the families, Laval makes include in the convoys of deportation the Jewish children of less than 16 years, whereas the Germans did not ask it. Bousquet carries out measurement, and gives up itself not including the children of less than 2 years. However the children are separately off-set their parents by its services, generally after being torn off with their mothers in the camps of French internment. No sign of identity indicates the name and the family of the babies and the young children installed in the separate convoys. Even while being unaware of or while wanting to be unaware of the extermination which awaited them on arrival, Rene could Bousquet seriously believe them able, on arrival in Poland, to indicate themselves which were their parents? In any case, this contradiction between the official humane argument and the reality believed on the ground do not seem to have particularly worried it. In April 1943, Bousquet met Heinrich Himmler during more than five hours which was declared “impressed by the personality of Bousquet” and described it as “invaluable collaborator within the framework of police collaboration”.

In parallel, Rene Bousquet played a crucial role of adviser at Pierre Laval at the side of Jean Jardin and Charles Rochat, the general secretary of the Quay of Orsay. The chief of the government often made him read his speeches.

Bousquet is then at the time the object of death sentences by the radio of London but he is as hated in the mediums of collaboration as it is by Joseph Barthélémy, Minister for Justice, evoking, in its “Memories” the " joy enfantine" of Bousquet " to spread out its table of hunting, the number of the arrestations" or by the newspapers collaborationnists, such “With the pilori”, which denounces this “fop montalbanais” who denounces his friendships freemason.

The December 2nd 1943, the craftsman of the bringing together between certain radicals and Laval, Maurice Sarraut, is assassinated. The assassins are militiamans. Rene Bousquet then makes of their arrest a personal deal but the Militia and the collaborationnists request from Berlin her revocation.

After having ordered some releases and having destroyed its files, Bousquet resigns the December 31st 1943. Its substitute will be Joseph Darnand, chief of the Militia.

Put of “availability”, it is placed under monitoring during ten days in a villa of Neuilly and takes then the road of Germany on board a car placed at the disposal by his/her friend Karl Oberg.

During the first six-month period 1944, it is still one of the pet peeves of the press collaborationnist, which shows it to have taken part in the administration of Vichy only to support Resistance. Thus, Jean-Paul Martin, his principal private secretary, also rendered services to certain resistance networks.

Bousquet is in Bavaria close to the Lac of Starnberg at the time of the German defeat. It returns then to France avoided of the title of " deportee in Allemagne".

It turns over then at Laval for which it writes, with Fresnes, the notes which this one needed for the preparation for its lawsuit and passes near him part of the night preceding its execution.

After the war

After the war, Rene Bousquet was likely to be the French last but one to appear before High Court of justice, as late as 1949. The purification was then breathless, the opinion more worried by the Cold war and the new problems born of the rebuilding. The reality and the specificity of the Génocide of the Jews still were very badly perceived, and the Jewish community had itself no desire which one insists again on his characteristics and his tragic fate. The place made with the Rafle S of the summer 1942 of this fact was relatively limited. The charge was not shown particularly keen, and the skilful defense of Bousquet made the remainder.

At the end of a three days lawsuit, Rene Bousquet was discharged by the High Court of justice “of the chief of attack to the interests of national defense” but was declared “convinced of the crime of national Indignité” automatically striking all those which had agreed to take part in the governments of the Vichyist time, and had condemned to the minimal sorrow of “five years of national Dégradation”. It “was immediately raised by it to have taken part in a way active and supported in resistance against the occupant”.

Drawn aside from high the public office, Bousquet was not going from there less to continue one brilliant career with the Banque of Indo-China and in the press.

It is Jean-Paul Martin, his former collaborator in Vichy, become principal private secretary of François Mitterrand, at the time minister of overseas, who puts in contact the two men.

The Council of State agree in 1957 to return its to him Légion of honor, and the former general secretary with the Police force of Vichy was even amnestied the January 17th 1958.

He then launched out in the Politique at the time of the legislative elections of 1958, and was candidate (supported by UDSR) in the third district of the Marne with for substitute Hector Bouilly, an general adviser radical socialist.

With only 4.461 votes, Bousquet gathered less than 10% of the votes, while the Marne elected three deputies UNR.

After death in 1959 of his/her friend Jean Baylet, Bousquet sat at the board of directors of the Dispatch of the South, of which it animated a time the direction at the sides of its widow, and thus made countryside in favor of François Mitterrand in 1965, with an anti-gaulliste leading line. The newspaper will go until making countryside against the vote of the women, at the time of the Référendum initiated by the de Gaulle General. The Dispatch of the South then kept a strong influence and the Midday-Pyrenees area was one of rare (with Marseilles) to vote against.

During the last years with the Dispatch of the South , the role of Bousquet is then important in the organization of anti-gaulliste fort running in Tarn-et-Garonne (and overall in the Midday-Pyrenees), " it directs, actually, the Toulouse daily newspaper throughout the years, while supervising of close its anti-gaulliste" political line; .

It is in 1971 that Bousquet leaves the board of directors of the Dispatch of the South and consequently, coincidence or not, the newspaper gives up the frankly hostile tone which it had against the mode incarnated by the Général de Gaulle (1958-1969) then by Georges Pompidou (since 1969) to become again a regional newspaper of left moderate.

In 1974, Rene Bousquet supports and brings his financial assistance to the candidate François Mitterrand against Valery Giscard d'Estaing. A Photographie of the time will testify to these contacts between the two men, brought together around one counted family in the house of Latche.

Rene Bousquet will attend several hundreds of other personalities, ignorant or not of his intrigues in Vichy. Rene Bousquet sits in particular at the board of directors of ATU (Union of air transports), directed by Antoine Veil (husband of Simone Veil), which he had already known with the brought together Chargers. In 1978, following the maintenance granted by Louis Darquier de Pellepoix to the Express train , Antoine Veil obtains the resignation of Rene Bousquet.

In 1981, after the victory of François Mitterrand to the presidential elections, Rene Bousquet will go to the Elysium “to speak political”. “ I listened to it like one listens to a political chronicler. He saw me as a continuator of a career which he had not been able to make. ” (declaration of François Mitterrand in Pascale Wheat).

In 1986, when the charges carried against Rene Bousquet take consistency, the meetings are done rarer until ceasing. An legal instruction is carried out and François Mitterrand is shown to intervene in the procedure to slow down it. Thus, the decision of the General prosecutor of Paris to return Bousquet before a Court of justice which does not exist any more causes the anger of Jean Pierre-Bloch speaking about “burial of first class”. François Mitterrand is aimed by name when the lawyers of the mission of the International federation of the Human rights state that “there is a political decision with the more high level not to advance the Bousquet business”, charges relayed by Laurent Greisalmer in Le Monde: “the file enlise in the mazes of the Law courts, guided by expert hands… Justice shows its dependence and the Head of the State does not explain the reasons that it has to save the Bousquet lawsuit. ”.

Assassination

In 1989, the association of the Wire and girls of Jewish deportees of France of Serge Klarsfeld, the National federation of the deportees and internees resistant and patriots and the League of the Human rights, deposited felt sorry for against Rene Bousquet for Crimes against humanity within the framework of the file of the deportation of 194 children of six departments of the south of France. He was accused in 1991 and the instruction was completed when he was assassinated of five balls by Christian Didier the June 8th 1993. This last will be condemned by the sitting of Paris in November 1995 to ten years of prison to be released on February 24th, 2000 of the central prison of Toul.

Thus, Rene Bousquet forever judged for Crimes against humanity and profits from this fact of the Présomption of innocence. It is however at the time of the passage of Rene Bousquet to the general secretary of the police force of Vichy that the major part of the deportations took place (60 000 off-set Jews, against 15.000 in 1944).

Films

Rene Bousquet appears, for the first time at the Cinéma, in Sorrow and pity of Marcel Ophüls (1971). This Documentaire was censured during 10 years on television French.

The film of Claude Chabrol the Eye of Vichy , left in 1992, is a film of assembly of the current events of the Régime of Vichy (1940-1944). Gone up in a chronological way, the film proposes a astonishing Distanciation while utilizing the voice of Michel Bouquet on the comments of time. Rene Bousquet appears in film and occupies a choice place in the demonstration of Claude Chabrol on compromisings of the senior officials during the Occupation.

In 2006, Laurent Heynemann carries out the Téléfilm (coproduit by Arte): Rene Bousquet or great arrangement . It is a question of the first French fiction to take for main character a large French collaborator. The comic actor Daniel Prévost lends his features to the Bousquet civil servant. The film shows a Rene Bousquet, growing old, caught up with by its past. The film develops also its relations with a fictitious character, played by Ludmila Mikaël. This character is a kind, according to the realizer, “of incarnation of humanity, and the Jewish memory returning by stages”. The documentary care, the sobriety of the setting in scene and the icy composition of Daniel Prévost were greeted by the whole of criticisms.

Finally a Documentary : the Enigma Rene Bousquet , carried out in 2007 for France 3, and diffused in the magazine `Passed under silence'. A radioscopy of the course of the man.

To note: the plan of the meeting between a Rene Bousquet smiling and the S Heydrich (film of topicality of 1942) are that which one systematically finds in the totality of films on Bousquet. In Rene Bousquet or Great Arrangement the scenario writers will even make say to Daniel Prévost (who incarnates Bousquet): “ They would have better done to leave their cameras on their premises, this day there!!! ”.

With knowknowing

Jean Leguay, his representative in occupied zone of May 1942 in January 1944, was the first French accused of " crimes against humanity " for the raid of Vel' d' Hiv, in July 1942.

Stop of June 23rd, 1949 of the High Court of justice

" (...) Considering that for so regrettable that is to say the behavior of BOUSQUET in various moments of its activity as General secretary with the Police force and in particular when it agreed to help with the action of mission DESLOGES, it does not appear that it knowingly achieved acts likely to harm national defense in the direction of article 83 of the Penal code and that it échet consequently to pronounce its payment,

Considering in addition that while agreeing to fill in the Ministry consisted LAVAL in the month of April 1942 the position of secretary general to the Police force which is one of those which makes it justiciable to the High court, it was made guilty of the crime of national unworthiness, But considering that it results from information and the debates the proof that in many circumstances BOUSQUET has, by its acts, taken part in a way active and supported in resistance against the occupant,

BY THESE REASONS,

Discharge BOUSQUET Rene of the chief of attack to the interests of national defense,

declares convinced of crime of national unworthiness, condemns it to the FIVE YEARS sorrow of NATIONAL DEGRADATION of this chief, raises it of the aforesaid the sorrow pursuant to article 3 par. 4 of the ordinance of December 26th, 1944 . "

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