Paul Touvier - Post Liberation

Post Liberation

After the liberation of France by the Allied forces, Touvier went into hiding; he escaped the summary execution suffered by many suspected collaborators. On September 10, 1946, the French State sentenced him to death in absentia for treason and collusion with the Nazis.

According to Ted Morgan, "He knew he couldn't stay in the Lyons area, so he went to Montpellier, in the south of France, and bought a boarding house. He remained there until 1946, when, for reasons as yet unexplained, he sold the property and went to Paris, where he joined a gang of other wanted collaborators involved in various illegal activities. They made bootleg chocolate, which they sold out of suitcases to candy stores. They passed counterfeit bills. Sometimes we spent days folding and unfolding bills so they didn't look new, Touvier said later. They stole a car. They held up a tax office in the middle of Paris. I went to a priest, said Touvier, who told me I had a right to take the state's money to feed my family. That was the psychology of the period. By family he meant Monique Berthet, a young woman with whom he was living. She worked in a bakery that Touvier was planning to rob. It was an easy job, he said. We'd have not only the money but the bread tickets, for rationing was still in force. But there was a police informer in Touvier's gang, and before he could hold up the bakery, he was arrested, in July 1947. By this time, Touvier had twice been tried in absentia for war crimes and twice been sentenced to death - in Lyons on Sept. 10, 1946, and in Chambery on March 4, 1947. Touvier knew that the Paris police would transfer him to Lyons, where his sentence would, in all likelihood, be carried out. On July 9, he escaped. Wandering in the streets of Paris, not knowing where to go, Touvier stopped at the first church he saw, Saint-Francois-Xavier, and told the parish priest he was a hunted man. The priest, Pierre Duben, was sympathetic. A few days later, Monique Berthet joined him and Father Duben married them, although they did not obtain a civil marriage license, and passed them on to a convent for shelter."