Paul Touvier - War Years

War Years

Joining the French Army's 8th Infantry Division, Touvier fought against the German Wehrmacht until, following the bombing of Chateau-Thierry, he deserted. Touvier returned in 1940 to Chambéry, which was then occupied by the Kingdom of Italy. His life took a new course after the Milice was established.

According to Ted Morgan, "Paul Touvier was assigned to expedite packages for prisoners of war, which got him into a spot of trouble, for he was caught removing the chocolate and the cigarettes from some of the packages. With these rationed articles he could impress girls. It should also be noted that Touvier was unusually good-looking, almost pretty, with wavy blond hair, delicate features and deep-set, intense blue eyes. He got a girl pregnant; the baby was turned over to a Catholic orphanage. All this did not sit well with Touvier pere. When Vichy Premier Pierre Laval formed the Milice, an armed pro-German militia, in February 1943, the father told his son to join, hoping it would put some backbone into him."

According to Morgan,

"Touvier went into the 2d Section in Chambery, which gathered intelligence. He found he was good at organizing files and recruiting informants and tailing suspects. He was so good, in fact, that he came to the attention of the inspectors from Vichy, who in September 1943 sent him to Lyons to be regional director. Lyons was a hub for both the Resistance and the Gestapo, whose Section 4, under Klaus Barbie, and Section 6, under August Moritz, were models of application in their pursuit of Resistance members and Jews. Both these offices made ample use of the Milice in carrying out their operations. Paul Touvier found that his job was not only collecting intelligence but taking part in arrests and other actions. In December 1943, at the instigation of the Gestapo, Touvier and his men raided a synagogue where some Jewish refugees were reportedly hiding. They found only a caretaker couple, and arrested them in front of their young daughter, who years later identified Touvier. The parents were deported to Auschwitz and did not return. Touvier may also have been connected, through the chain of command, to the murders of Victor Basch and his wife, on Jan. 11, 1944, although documents show that he was not present when the crime was committed. Basch, who today has a street in Lyons named after him, was president of the League of the Rights of Man, the most important French civil rights group. In 1944, he was 80, and his wife was 75. The two were arrested in their home in a combined Milice-Gestapo operation, taken to a spot on the banks of the Rhone river and shot. In April 1944, Touvier led a raid outside Lyons, on the fairgrounds in the town of Montmelian, five miles from Chambery, and rounded up 57 Spanish refugees, who were deported to the camps. Only nine returned, three of whom later identified him."

Also according to Morgan,

"He was notorious for his racketeering among the Jews, to whom he would promise protection at a price. He was notorious for taking the apartments and the property of those he arrested. In tape-recorded reminiscences he made in 1969 to a priest, Msgr. Charles Duquaire, Touvier said, For me, what I did was legal. I was told, 'You will requisition the apartments of Jews.' I did it. 'You need cars, you'll requisition them.' I therefore requisitioned cars . . . .You could call that theft. For me it was requisitioning."

Touvier carried out the execution of seven Jewish hostages at Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon, on 29 June 1944. This was in retaliation for the murder the previous evening of Philippe Henriot, the Vichy Government's Secretary of State for Information and Propaganda. Following his arrest in 1989, Touvier admitted his involvement in the massacre. He alleged, however, that Klaus Barbie had originally demanded the shooting of 30 Jews in retaliation for Henriot's murder. Touvier claimed to have negotiated the number down to 7.

At his 1994 trial, Touvier testified, ""Right to the end, I tried to find another solution. We tried to reduce the number of victims from 30. I said we would do seven at a time. We could not avoid the catastrophe. But I did, even so, save 23 human lives."