René Bousquet
René Bousquet was born on 11 May 1909. After an early career under Pierre Cathala, then France’s interior minister, in 1940 René Bousquet was appointed préfet after the Armistice. In September 1941, he was appointed as the youngest regional préfet and on 18 April 1942, Pierre Laval appointed Bousquet general secretary of the police under Vichy. In early May 1942, Bousquet sought and obtained consent from the SS to deport 5,000 Jews from Drancy to extermination centers in the East. Bousquet played a key role in the Vél d’Hiv roundups (Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv) of 16-17 July 1942, where upwards of 13,000 foreign-born and “stateless” Jews were arrested and subsequently deported. Bousquet personally cancelled orders protecting some categories of people from arrests, thus allowing 4,000 children under 18 to be arrested at gunpoint and interned. In January 1943, Bousquet collaborated in a Nazi-organized arrest of 2,000 Jews in the Marseille area. Bousquet’s influence on the fate of the Schloss Collection was constrained by the dominant role that his rival, Darquier de Pellepoix, played in its seizure and dispersal. He coordinated security arrangements for the collection during its transfer to and arrival in Paris in August 1943. Bousquet was tried and convicted as a collaborator in 1949, but his sentence was reduced due to the belief that he had helped the resistance. He was indicted again in 1991 over his role in the roundups of Jews in 1942 and their subsequent deportation and murder. Before he could go on trial, he was assassinated in June 1993 in Paris.
Literature: McMillen, [about:blank Paul John.]The French Police, Rene Bousquet and the Nazis. The History and the Historiography of Nazi Occupied France. [about:blank Eastern Kentucky University] 2006.
Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944. Columbia University Press 1972. Golsan, Richard J. “Memory and Justice Abused: The 1949 trial of René Bousquet,” Studies in twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter 1999). [about:blank https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1456]. Accessed on 28 May 2021.