Maurice Papon

French politician who actively consorted with the Nazis during WW II, sending Jews to the concentration work camps and to their death. Post-war, he once more resumed the pretence of a loyal Frenchman until his true role was revealed.

In 1931 Papon joined the staff of the Ministry of Aviation and in 1935, moved to the Interior Ministry. He was briefly a member of the Radical-Socialist Yout and edited the party newspaper le Jacobin. But he soon changed his political allegiance and joined the Gaullists. Papon married on 26 August 1932; three children.

In August 1939 he was called up for military service and from March to October 1940 he was confined to a military post in Syria. When he returned to France on 25 October 1940, he was offered a position at the Interior Ministry and took charge of the Gironde prefecture. In 1942 his special responsibilities for Jewish affairs brought him into regular contact with the SS.

On Papon's direct orders, between July 1942 and June 1944 nearly 1,600 Jews, including 130 children under 13, were rounded up and sent to the detention camps at Drancy, near Paris. These were the staging posts for deportation to the Nazi concentration camps. Only a handful of those ordered detained by Papon survived their ordeal.

In 1944, when it became clear that the tide of the war was turning against Germany, Papon began to pass information about the Nazis to the Resistance. After the war, he was decorated by General de Gaulle with the "Carte d'Ancien Combattant de la Resistance" and resumed his work as a public servant. He was Paris Chief of Police until 1968 and in 1970 he served as Budget Minister for President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

For 35 years, Papon served France as a patriot, until 1981, when documents were uncovered in the Bordeaux town hall implicating him with Nazi affairs. The newly surfaced papers included deportation orders personally signed by him.