SPEAKER AND GAVEL 2002

The "Vichy Syndrome" and Legal

Decision-Making in French Holocaust Trials

Marouf Hasian, Jr.

Abstract

This essay unpacks some of the communicative dimensions of French Holocaust Trials. By looking at the controversial Barbie and Touvier legal proceedings, the author explores some complications that attend legal commentaries on the "Vichy Syndrome." In the aftermath of World War II, many French legal authorities believed in the Gaullist myths of national French resistance, but the passage of time has brought renewed interest in the documentation of Vichy collaboration. A rhetorical analysis of these cases illustrates the problematic nature of Holocaust trials that attempt to instantiate partial visions of World War II histories and memories.

Introduction

These trials served an important function in re-examining long-buried

events. . . . In the end, it was as if history was being rewritten by a fairer and more benevolent hand, because some form of reparation could be made.

Ted Morgan, May 22, 1994.¹

In the last several years, a growing number of communication scholars have taken an interest in exploring the role that "memory" places in various forms of public deliberation.² They have joined the interdisciplinary communities that have looked into the persuasive dimensions of a variety of objects, including museum artifacts, films, memorials, scrapbooks, calendar days, diaries, and historiographies.³ This renaissance of interest in the functions and structures of particular collective remembrances provides researchers with some unique opportunities, because both lay persons and scholars seem genuinely interesting in understanding some of the "consequences of memory."⁴

In this particular essay, I would like to join in this scholarly conversation by looking at the role that legal decision-makers play in this modern memory work. Douglas has recently noted that an examination of "a specialized legal instrument, the criminal trial," can be "used as a tool of collective pedagogy and as a salve of traumatic history."⁵ This is a very strong claim, because

Owen and Ehrenhaus have shown us some of the difficulties that one encounters when individuals and societies try to work through their "traumatic" memories.⁶ Zelizer has similarly remarked that all forms of "witnessing" and remembrance

Marouf Hasian, Jr., Associate Professor, Department of Communication, 255 S. Central Campus Drive Room 240, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112,. Marouf.Hasian@m.cc.utah.edu

Speaker and Gavel, Vol. 39 (2002), 1-22

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involve the use of selective rhetorical frames, meaning that we always run the risk of forgetting other perspectives.⁷

Throughout this essay, I will argue that most Holocaust trials do not serve any unique communicative purposes, and that the costs of these trials outweigh their benefits. While there is little question that Holocaust remembrances do serve vital functions, we need to be aware of the fact that there are many extra-judicial forums that could be used to accomplish this task. As Roy Schwartzman has recently observed, we need to avoid having memory "degenerated to memoria technica," where "long lists of information" are used to "impress audiences," but "hardly serving any significant social functions."⁸ As I argue below, staging Holocaust trials that reconstruct legal histories and memories of bygone years are popular with some political constituencies, but they raise a series of questions about procedural fairness and substantive due process rights. After the passage of more than half a century, memories fade, witnesses die, documents get buried, rules about statute of limitations get altered because of changing administrative leadership, and some parties have to sit in the docks because they have outlived their more culpable leaders. The importance of these issues means that communication scholars need to take up the challenge of exploring some of the rhetorical dimensions of these national and international Holocaust trials.

In order to unpack some of the communicative dimensions of this legal memory-work, I undertake a case study that investigates some of the rhetorical dimensions of what some have called the "Vichy Syndrome."⁹ In the afterglow of V-E day in Europe, many French citizens joined in the celebrations that marked the victorious end of the Allied conquest of the Third Reich, but suspicious observers were sometimes pointing out that many French politicians were forgetting the amount of collaboration that took place under German occupation. The "Free French" forces might talk about how most of the population supposedly supported the resistance, and purges did take place, but how did these rhetors explain the discrimination, the segregation, or the Aryanization of various laws that were passed during the "Vichy" years?¹⁰ Charles DeGaulle tried to answer these critics by arguing that the France that had emerged from the war was an undivided nation, whose resistance fighters had maintained a four-year struggle against a few Nazi collaborationists.¹¹ From within this Gaullist narrative, France had liberated herself from Hitler's minions. The Allied acceptance of such legal storytelling had pragmatic consequences, for it meant that France would not be occupied in the post-war era.

Yet as I argue below, the acceptance of such tales created a number of rhetorical problems for future decision-makers who might be interested in the prosecution of French war criminals.

The preservation or erosion of particular memories of French complicity is obviously a very volatile judicial issue, for both domestic and international observers. During the war, more than 75,000 Jews were deported out of France, and for almost half a century scholars have been intrigued by the question of how to deal with the French "Vichy syndrome." Should scholars and lay persons simply accept the Gaullist myth and engage in collective acts of cultural amnesia? How have various French tribunals handled these legal memories, and has this helped

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or hurt the working through of Holocaust memories? I argue that by comparing and contrasting the judicial memories that operated in the cases of Klaus Barbie (Gestapo chief), and Paul Touvier (Lyon milice),¹² we gain an appreciation of the incremental nature of the working through of French traumatic pasts. During these two trials, some audiences had to decide whether they were willing to engage in revisionist historicism, and there were vehement disagreements about the benefits that came from the opening up of some old political wounds. Moreover, these trials brought to the surface some generational differences in the ways that French citizens were willing to remember and forget Vichy France's dealings with the Nazis.

For communication scholars who are interested in the intimate relationship that exists between argument, history, and memory, this particular case study provides us with a heuristic lens that allows us to view how certain remembrances can shape the ways that national communities think about strengths and limitations of what once scholar has called "didactic legality."¹³ This concept invites critics to look into the question of whether courts are in the business of exercising "legal judgment" and the clarification of the "historical record."¹⁴ Are judicial forums equipped to provide closure for cases of legal justice and collective pedagogy?¹⁵

In order to help provide some tentative answers to such questions, this essay has been divided into four major segments. The first portion of the essay begins the analysis by exploring some of the cultural expectations that led to the judicial interrogation of Klaus Barbie, a notorious Nazi leader. This section illuminates many of the ideological barriers that stand in the way of the collective "working through" of certain memories. The second section builds on this analysis by showing how the trial of Paul Touvier provided some of these same communities with new opportunities for getting rid of their Vichy syndrome and how such sentiments eventually led to the trial of a Frenchman by the name of Paul Touvier. Both of these trials raised a number of issues that many members of the French community had hoped would be forgotten_the complicity of some French police with the Nazis, the colonial troubles in Algeria, and the popularity of Holocaust revisionism in France. While many interdisciplinary scholars hoped that some of these trials would help the French people with their Holocaust consciousness-raising, this proved to be a difficult and complicated task.

Klaus Barbie, the Trials in Lyon,

and France's Experimentation with "Crimes Against Humanity"

I fought the Resistance, which I respect, with hardness; but it was war and the war is over.¹⁶

Klaus Barbie, 1987

closing remarks at his trial

I would guess that if most international scholars and lay persons were asked to name history's worst war criminal they would probably mention the name of Adolf Eichmann, but I am convinced that they are thinking of the actions of someone like Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo captain who received medals for his counter-"terrorist" activities during World War II. Proceedings against Barbie would be

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gin in the 1980s, but there have always been observers who have complained that this belated justice provided an index of the unwillingness of many French to rethink the extent of the complicity and collaboration that might have taken place after the Nazi occupation.¹⁷ For decades, critics outside of France had complained that this was a nation occupied by a people who refused to accept Vichy's role in the occupation, and now Barbie's trial was viewed as France's answer to this criticism. Yet there were some who saw this as merely an example of an evil villain finally being brought to justice. As Brendan Murphy (who spend a great deal of time interviewing many of Barbie's victims, neighbors, and protectors) noted in 1983:

The trial of another prominent Nazi war criminal is now approaching, but no such lesson of banality can be drawn from the life of Klaus Barbie, the so called "Butcher of Lyon." If Eichmann was the detached bureaucrat expediting millions to gas chambers and crematoria in Eastern Europe, Barbie is the very opposite. He was closer in nature to the reality of the Nazi ethos: a brutal man of evil intent. . . . He was not only able to commit the crimes for which he was twice condemned to death by French military tribunals, but he was able to avoid punishment for almost forty years afterwards. . . . he became the prototype of unchastened criminality [emphasis in the original].¹⁸

During the immediate post-World War II period, French authorities searched for Barbie, but in the postwar intelligence years, it was said that he received the protection of the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).¹⁹ Barbie was considered to be a person who could help the fledgling U.S. intelligence services establish spy networks that would counter communism, and in exchange for this aid he was given a new passport (under the name of "Klaus Altmann") and a Bolivian visa. Even though authorities in France and Germany were able to track him down again in the early 1960s, the lack of extradition treaties with Bolivia meant that he was temporarily living in safety. When surviving relatives of some of his alleged victims tried to bring him to trial in West Germany in 1971, a Munich prosecutor determined that it was then impossible to prove that Barbie knew that the Jews he had arrested for deportation were going to be gassed at Auschwitz, and the case was dropped.²⁰ Three years later, Bolivia rejected French demands for Barbie's extradition.²¹

Yet in spite of these national and international obstacles, by the late 1970s and early 1980s it was clear that a growing number of private individuals and public communities had not given up hope that Barbie would eventually be tried in some courtroom. Officials in both France and Israel expressed an interest in prosecuting Barbie.²² His wartime suppression of thousands of resistance fighters, communists, and Jews were acts that were still remembered by a number of victims, bystanders, and perpetrators. Barbie had been a key figure in the Nazi re-occupation of France in late 1942, and it was alleged that for the next several years he was personally involved in the deportation or killing of thousands of Europeans. Decades later, some the survivors supplied some of the most gruesome details of the

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weeks that were spent in places like Lyon's Fort Montluc or the Ecole de Santé. A reporter for the Los Angeles Times would later report that the commencement of the Barbie proceedings would show the world how France was going to interpret the concept of "crimes against humanity."²³

When Barbie was brought to France in 1983, this was not the first time that he had been involved in these types of hearings. Military courts in Lyon had determined in 1952 and in 1954 that he had committed war crimes while he was fighting the French Resistance, but he had managed to make his escape.²⁴ In situations like this, the passage of time usually means that a defendant may be protected by the statute of limitations for war crimes, but during the 1980s many nations were beginning to treat crimes against humanity as "imprescriptable crimes," which meant that such acts would be free of any statute of limitations.²⁵ French audiences now read that Barbie was going to be tried for the following actions:

1. The arrest and assassination of a local police officer and 22 others, including women and children, in retaliation for an armed action against two German military policemen during the summer of 1943;

2. The arrest and torture of 19 persons in Lyon during the summer of 1943;

3. The liquidation of the Lyon Committee of the General Union of the Jews in France (U.G.I.F) in February of 1943;

4. The execution by firing squad of 42 persons; including 40 Jews, in Lyon and the surrounding area during 1943-1944;

5. A raid against a workshop in August of 1944. Several people were arrested, wounded, or killed; and

6. The August 11, 1944 deportation of some 650 people (half were Jews) to the Auschwitz and Ravensbruck concentration camps.²⁶

These formal charges were the only "remaining legal" types that "could be brought for his part in the Holocaust."²⁷ Unlike some of the other Holocaust trials that were taking place during the last quarter of the twentieth century, this was one trial that involved both documentary evidence and victims' testimonials. A battery of more than 40 prosecutorial lawyers called some 80 witnesses who spent four weeks providing testimony that detailed Barbie's activities between 1942-1945.²⁸

Press reporters who watched this trial realized the seriousness of the allegations and the potential consequences of having a trial that revisited many of the questions that might touch on Vichy collaboration and Nazi coercion. One journalist who sat in on some of the first weeks of the trial reported that the afternoon sessions seemed to be more like "performances than presentations of information" and that the newspaper accounts "read like reviews of a play."²⁹ The trial was held in Lyon's Palace of Justice, and pageantry was in the air. While the lawyers in the case wore black robes and white bibs, the judges and leading prosecutor wore red robes decorated with ermine collars.³⁰ No cameras, radios, or televisions were allowed into the French courtrooms, and the taping of the proceedings would be put away in the archives until the year 2007.³¹

For this former Nazi SS Captain, the entire trial was considered to be a sham, because this French Court was dredging up legal material on events that had taken

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place some forty years ago. Much like the Nuremberg trials, this seemed to be a victor's trial, where relatively young prosecutors showed little respect for the German soldiers who did their best for the Fatherland. Flora Lewis, writing from Paris, remarked that:

He [Barbie] showed no sign of regret, contrition, even awareness of what the regime he served had meant. With stubborn, breathtaking composure, he relied on the ironic argument that he was being tried illegally because he had been brought from his refuge in Bolivia to stand trial in France by force, though with the agreement of the Bolivian Government of the time.³²

Barbie, like Eichmann before him, had many excuses. So did his defense counsel.³³

In many ways, the Barbie trial became much more than a judicial proceeding involving the potential guilt or innocence of a single individual_it was also an illustration of the difficulties that come with trying to "work through" particular Holocaust memories. The defense team, led by the controversial Jacques Vergès, made some of the usual procedural motions during the pre-trial proceedings, and many of the cross-examination questions were the types that one might expect. Vergès pointed out that Barbie was confronting witnesses who had faulty memories, and that some of the documents that were used against him were inauthentic or inaccurate. The defense attorneys also explained that Barbie was simply following orders when he signed some of the incriminating bureaucrat memos.

Barbie's case took a bizarre twist when Jacques Vergès decided that part of the defense strategy would involve relativizing the actions of the Gestapo in France. Instead of just claiming that Barbie was relying on orders that had been dictated from above, this leftist lawyer determined that he was going to call witnesses who would testify to some similar atrocities that had been committed by French officials during the colonial years. Vergès reasoned that if Barbie was going to be put on trial for crimes against humanity, then the French nation needed to face the memories of the tortures that had been inflicted on colonial subjects in places like Algeria during 1958-1962.³⁴

The reporters who covered the trial were mesmerized by these defense strategies, because they touched on some previously taboo subjects in French collective memories. During some parts of the Barbie trial, Vergès hinted that part of his defense was going to be based on proof of French complicity in the Holocaust. This was also a defense attorney who was willing to do what many other lawyers refused to do_he questioned the veracity of some of the survivors who had lived through the horrors of World War II. The defense only called six witnesses to the stand, and on June 15, 1987, Vergès began the direct examination of Eddine Lakdar-Toumi. Toumi was put on the stand to try and show that French laws that dealt with wartime atrocities were inconsistently applied, and that this was a nation that did not rigorously apply any international standards in determining crimes against humanity. In commenting on Lakdar-Toumi's role, Vergès observed that this witness's father had been killed after being arrested by French Army officers, but that a suit that had been filed in 1986 had been dismissed because of an amnesty

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that had been granted in the early 1960s for Algerian war crimes.³⁵ Two other witnesses, Paul Guiochon and Jacques Fastré, testified that the French crimes that had been committed in Algeria were on par with those that had been committed by the Nazis during the occupation.

These tactics infuriated the multiple prosecutorial teams, because they drew attention away from Klaus Barbie's wartime activities and toward a much more universal discussion of French nationalism and crimes against humanity. Vergès must have sensed that the topic of French colonialism was not scoring that many points with the judges, so he decided to shift gears and bring the case back to the Lyon of the 1940s. He called to the stand 63-year old Yves Damion, who had been a member of the S.S. during World War II. Damion testified that Barbie had been second-in-command of the German security forces in Lyon, and that he believed that Barbie was just following the orders of his superiors. Moreover, Damion remarked that his listeners needed to remember that in the Gestapo hierarchy, the person who signed a report about an operation was not necessarily the same person who carried out that operation.³⁶

The last witness who testified for the defense was Jacques Forment Delauney, a historian who took the position that the telex reporting on the arrest and deportation of the 44 children from Izieu did not contain Barbie's signature. Delauney had been doing some of his own research in the mid-1970s, and his photocopy of the telex was not the same as the one that had been presented by some of the prosecutorial teams.³⁷

Throughout the presentation of the defendant's case, many observers both inside and outside the courtroom were trying to decide just when Vergès would carry out his threats and show the extent of French collaboration with the Nazis.³⁸ To the relief of some of his compatriots, he never did. This would not have been too difficult a chore, because we now know that at least 860,000 Europeans outside of Germany chose to enlist in the Waffen-SS, and millions more volunteered to work in other capacities. In 1944, there were 171,000 Parisians who were working in Germany, and more than 400,000 were employed by the Germans during the occupation.³⁹ In spite of Gaullist myths, not all of these French men and women were members of the resistance.

In his summary of the prosecutor's case against Barbie, Pierre Truche pulled very few punches, and he did not avoid confronting the question of French complicity in Vichy affairs. He told his audiences that a verdict against the former Nazi captain should not be seen as a "salve to the conscience of France" because of Barbie's German origins. Truche remarked that more than 700 collaborators had been executed after the war, and Germany had been afflicted by a "Nazi cancer" for 12 years.⁴⁰ "We were affected by the same cancer," he observed, and "we took tranquilizers."⁴¹ The prosecutors admitted that some 208 people had been working in the Lyon Gestapo office, and that many of them were French collaborators or functionaries.⁴² These facts, however, did not excuse or mitigate Barbie's actions.

French trial procedures are usually complex affairs, and in Barbie's case both the jury and the judge had to answer some 341 questions regarding questions related to the defendant's guilt or innocence. All of the answers to these questions

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pointed toward Barbie's guilt, and he was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity.⁴³ One supporter of these proceedings claimed that the "norms of French justice were applied with meticulous precision."⁴⁴

Yet Barbie had been a German officer, and some critics worried that if this was going to be France's last war crimes trial, the nation would never "work through" the Vichy traumas. Others, however, thought that the Barbie trial was as important for France as the Eichmann trial had been for Israel. Near the beginning of the proceedings, Jacques Chirac, the French Prime Minister, announced that the nation's high schools would be providing an hour's lesson on the anti-Jewish laws that had been passed during the Vichy years.⁴⁵ One Israeli reporter, Tamar Golan, remarked that what terrified her was the growing realization of the simplicity of the Nazi machinery, operating within a city that went on "living normally."⁴⁶

Other national and international commentators were not so confident. Even those who felt nothing but antipathy for Barbie were not always sure that French courts needed to be involved in these proceedings. In May of 1987, an indignant Ugo Iannucci, a representative of Lyon's Federation of Deported Resistants, asked the Court: "Who's the real defendant here? This should be Barbie's trial, but it's turning into the trial of the Resistance."⁴⁷ Paul Montgomery, an American journalist writing from Brussels, remarked in July of 1987 that:

There were some in France who believe that the country had lessons to learn from the Barbie trial, and there were many others_probably the majority_who believe that history is a matter of people acting in a certain way at a certain time, with no moral to be drawn from it. In the latter view, those who were not there, or who were not born [yet], have no right to judge . . . Barbie's could be the last trial of its kind in Western Europe. One of its lessons at least is a bitter one: Very few of us are heroes.⁴⁸

Montgomery was wrong, the Barbie trial would not the last trial of its kind. Something was still missing from the French discussions of Vichy collaboration. Since the early post-war purges, very few French citizens had to contemplate the possibility that they themselves, or their relatives, might have to stand trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity. This changed in the 1990s, when Paul Touvier had his day in court.

The Trial of Paul Touvier and the Interrogation of Vichy Memories

I have never forgotten the victims of Rillieux. I think of them every day, every evening.

Paul Touvier, April, 1994.⁴⁹

In April of 1994, a frail defendant sat in a Versailles courtroom, anxiously waiting the judgment of one of France's appellate Courts. For more than forty years, this individual and his family had lived in hiding, sheltered by conservative clerics who must have believed that they were keeps both their vows of charity and their promises to the defendant. The man in the docks, Paul Touvier, was a Frenchman who had been sentenced twice before in post-war France for alleged war crimes. He had been saved by the fact that the statute of limitations had run out on those crimes in 1967. The intervention of some highly placed friends had even

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helped him procure a pardon in the early 1970s, but somehow these decisions did not seem to matter much to the newer generations who saw him in a different light. To them, he was the second "Butcher of Lyon," Barbie's accomplice and the first Frenchman to be tried for "crimes against humanity."

Touvier's lawyer, Jacques Trémolet de Villers, would later call these proceedings a "show trial,"⁵⁰ but many of his compatriots saw this courtroom as just the next step in the logical progression of legal remembrance. Merchant, writing in the Journal of Criminal Justice in 1995, predicted that "the Touvier trial itself will stand out for future generations as the first example of the attempt to join history, law, and justice."⁵¹ For many critics of the old Gaullist resistance myths, it was about time that observers around the world saw how the French were finally coping with Vichy complicity in the Holocaust. Didn't the younger generations deserve to learn the "truth," even if they were unpalatable for some? During World War II, some 75,721 Jews were sent from Vichy France to German concentration and death camps, and only a fraction survived the Judeocide.⁵²

The advent of the Touvier trial meant that now the French social agents were going to take center stage. If French politicians and judges were truly going to help their compatriots work through their Vichy memories, then there had to come a time when they were willing to confront the question of French complicity in Nazi affairs. The changing political scenes, differing generational expectations, and altered jurisprudential rules all converged and helped blur the line that purportedly existed between war crimes and crimes against humanity. Eventually, some French citizen would have to become a lightening rod for the expiation of collective guilt.

Paul Touvier seemed to be the unfortunate candidate who would become the potent signifier of Vichy complicity. Touvier was the chief of Milice intelligence in the Lyons area, and his status as a high ranking security officer meant that he sometimes worked closely with Klaus Barbie. The Milice had been a powerful governmental paramilitary force, and it was considered by many to have been the local enforcement agency for the Nazis. When the French resistance escalated their attacks on the invaders, Touvier's job included catching these would-be "terrorists" and directing the reprisals.

When reporters delved into Touvier's background, they found a host of explanations for why this French official could have become a Nazi collaborator. He had grown up in the small Alpine village of Chambery. His father, François Touvier, was a tax collector in that town, but the family was reported to have been relatively poor. Most of the Touviers were anti-Republican and anti-Semitic.⁵³ There must have been times when he heard about the story of the malevolent power of the "International Jew," who worked behind the scenes in many anti-Semitic narratives. Joining the Milice might mean that a person would be provided with the opportunity of fighting the communists.

These political and national tensions exacerbated an already volatile situation. By June of 1944, it was clear to even the most die-hard Nazi supporter that the war was not going well for the Germans. More than a million Allied troops had landed at Normandy, and the French Resistance declared open warfare with the Milice.⁵⁴ In order to help maintain order and boost morale, the Germans gave

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Joseph Darnand even more ministerial power than before, and he now had at his disposal close to 30,000 auxiliary militia members. The Gestapo now used these personnel for hunting down the `enemies of the state"_the Resistance fighters and the Jews who stood in the way of the new French regime.⁵⁵ With the help of Philippe Henriot, the Information and Propaganda director, the Milice were trying to minimize pro-Gaullist sentiment throughout France. When the allies began to drop their bombs on French cities in April and June of 1944, thousands of civilians were killed, and the Milice were provided with even more justificatory arguments on the need to control the internal enemies of the state.⁵⁶

In late June, 1944, Henriot was assassinated by some members of the Resistance, and this infuriated both the Gestapo and the Malice. In towns like Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lyons, Macon and Toulouse, the local chiefs were expected to take retaliatory measures.⁵⁷ During this period, Touvier was the head of Deuxième Service, which was the Malice's information branch. He was therefore in charge of an area covering some 10 departments (4 million people).⁵⁸

Scholars today are still debating just who gave the orders for the execution of Jews in retaliation for Henriot's assassination, but there is a consensus of opinion that on the morning of June 29, 1944, seven individuals were shot beneath a cemetery wall in the northern part of Rillieux-la-Pape.⁵⁹ Touvier never denied giving the order for their execution, but as we shall see later, he pleaded that his actions were unavoidable.

At the end of the war, Touvier went into hiding, and in 1946 and 1947 he was tried by different French courts for treason and "assisting the enemy." Thousands of other Milice members died during the post-war purges, but Touvier managed to survive. For the next 26 years he was able to stay in hiding, until he was pardoned by President Georges Pompidou. In an ironic twist of fate, it would be Pompidou's act of clemency in 1971 that would eventually fuel renewed efforts to bring Touvier to justice.⁶⁰

The question of whether Touvier should ever have been brought to trial was a divisive issue in France. Representatives of several resistance groups now joined with members of Jewish organizations in calling for the retrial of Touvier. In June of 1972, a group of demonstrators led by Beate Klarsfeld went so far as to break down the gates of his home in Chambery and his house was looted. Touvier and his family went into hiding once more, and for almost a decade he was able to evade French authorities. In 1981, an examining magistrate was finally about to indict Touvier and begin the modern day proceedings against the former Milice chief, but it took eight more years before the police were able to find his hiding place in Nice. Bruno Barrillot, a researcher for the Center for Documentation and Research on Peace and Conflicts in Lyons, hoped that his colleagues understood that Touvier was "the most wanted war criminal in France."⁶¹

When the "Touvier Affair" reached a Paris appellate court in April of 1992, it looked as if these trials might once again be derailed. This particular body shocked observers when it dismissed the criminal and civil cases against Touvier, reasoning that 11 of the 12 criminal counts against him were not supported by either the law or the facts in the case. Using some very formalist and yet creative reasoning, the Parisian jurists reported that several legal precedents_including the Barbie de

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cision—had helped establish some key guidelines for analyzing cases involving war crimes and crimes against humanity. While the Nuremberg tribunals had talked about how acts like genocide, deportation, or enslavement could constitute crimes against humanity, it would be French jurists who had to decide just which state agencies could be held responsible for these violations. The Parisian court tried to claim that in the Barbie case the Cour de Cassation (the highest judicial authority in France) had reasoned in 1985 that only states engaged in practices based on "a policy of ideological hegemony" could be involved in crimes against humanity.⁶² Since this appellate court believed that Nazi Germany and not Vichy France had such organized ideologies, this meant that Touvier could only be held responsible for those specific crimes where he was assisting the Nazis.

The decision of the Cour de Cassation meant that the French lower courts had to re-examine the factual and legal frameworks that would be used in re-evaluating Holocaust documents and eye-

eye-witness accounts. In Touvier's case, the members of the Parisian Court believed that the only crime that might fall under these guidelines was the murder of the seven Jews at Rillieux, but that was a war crime that fell under the statute of limitations.

From a rhetorical vantage point, this legal maneuvering was intriguing, because it meant that the French appellate courts could now sidestep the question of direct French war guilt. The Germans would be remain the primary culprits in these tales involving crimes against humanity. The historical competition between various collaborationist, resistant, nationalistic, clerical, and Communistic groups meant that the appellate court could depict the Vichy years as turbulent times, when France simply had no "ideological hegemony." Within this framework, the acts that were committed by the Milice were not automatically considered to be "crime against humanity." ⁶³ As an added bonus of such reasoning, if this definition held up to judicial scrutiny, it meant that the French officers who might have been involved in colonial atrocities could not have committed any crimes against humanity. The use of this type of narrative framing also meant that Touvier could now be treated as if he was a common thief, instead of an active accomplice in the "Final Solution." The same legal maneuvers that had helped bring Barbie to trial (and convict him) were now being appropriated for the purposes of shielding Touvier.

The Parisian decision (April, 1992) was greeted with public ridicule and invective. Many felt that the members of this tribunal understood the letter, but not the spirit of the Nuremberg principles. What angered many observers was the recognition that these jurists refused to see the philosophical linkages between Vichy France and Nazi Germany, and this gave the impression that at least some French jurists were helping to preserve the Gaullist myths of a pristine France. After all, weren't the members of the French Milice equivalent in both power and ideology to the Germans' SS?⁶⁴ Such debates spilled over in the public domain, where lay persons carried on conversations about the culpability of the average French citizen.

During the fall of 1992 the Cour de cassation allowed for Touvier's retrial on the theory that he may have been advancing Nazi interests, and the French legal

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community was provided with yet another opportunity to work through the nation's Holocaust memories. Most of the most damning evidence in the case came from witnesses who portrayed Touvier as a French Hitlerite who brutalized his prisoners. Both the prosecutors and the representatives for the civil plaintiffs focused on the racial dimensions of the Rillieux murders.⁶⁵ The witnesses who testified in the Versailles courtroom painted a damning portrait of Touvier's character and his activities. One of the most effective witnesses who appeared for the prosecution was Louis Goudard, a former member of the Communist-led Francs-Tireurs et Parisans (F.T.P.) Resistant Movement. In June of 1944 Goudard had been a scared 24 year-old prisoner of the Milice in Lyon, and he was able to tell the court about his various conversations with some of Jews who were shot by Touvier's militia members.⁶⁶ Several of them were hopeful that the Milice were just after money and other property, but this was not the case. Even after they handed over their personal property or real estate, they were taken back to prison.

Several key prosecution witnesses helped establish the claim that Jews were singled out for execution on the basis of Touvier's orders. Goudard, who had barely escaped being killed himself, told the court that on June 29^th, 1944 he found himself alone in his cell and he realized that "I had been spared because I was not Jewish."⁶⁷ Another witness, Gilberte Duc, had been Touvier's Secretary. She recalled that she had heard her boss say; "Henriot is avenged_we killed seven Jews." When Touvier rose up in the courtroom and claimed that he had never said that, Duc responded that she knew that Touvier had kept lists of Jews to be arrested in his files.⁶⁸ These cards would become another key part of the prosecution's case as they tried to show the "ideology" that linked the Milice with the Gestapo.

Touvier's aide-de-camp, Edmont Fayolle, corroborated Goudard's testimony. In 1946 Fayolle had been tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for his work in the Milice, but he ended up serving only 12 years of his sentence. Fayolle testified that he personally "saw Touvier give the orders" for the murder of some of the prisoners, and that he "heard him ask if the cards were ready."⁶⁹ To make sure that the local population would get the message, Touvier ordered that name tags be prepared for each of the seven individuals who was marked for death at Rillieux.

The cumulative effect of all of this evidence helped to create a picture of a cold murderer who blamed Jews for Henriot's murder. The documentary record revealed that Touvier had been in charge of at least 25 prisoners, and the prosecution argued that if this retaliation was not ideological motivated, then all of them should have had an equal chance of being taken to Rillieux. The defendant's use of the cards with Jewish names tipped the scales.

This witness testimony was damaging in and of itself, but the prosecutors took no chances and turned their attention to Touvier's own admissions and his writings. The defendant never denied having ordered the execution of the seven victims at Rillieux_he simply argued that he had to act quickly because of orders, and that he had randomly selected the prisoners that had been shot. From the prosecution's vantage point, it looked as though Touvier was being evasive and unwilling to acknowledge any pity or remorse for anyone but himself.⁷⁰

During such proceedings, public statements that are made outside of the courtroom often have a way of creeping into judicial trials of defendants, and Touvier's

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case was no exception. In the middle of April, 1994, President Mitterand mentioned in an interview that he personally believed that it was futile for the government to be involved in trying old men for crimes where there were few witnesses and "hardly any meaning any more."⁷¹ An editorial writer for The London Times believed that this was a sentiment that was "widely shared among France's wartime generation."⁷²

Yet there were also many French observers who were still interested in having a Touvier trial. One of the most intriguing prosecutorial positions was taken by Arno Klarsfeld, the young attorney who was the son of two very famous Nazi hunters.⁷³ Klarsfeld, unlike many of the other state prosecutors and lawyers for the civil plaintiffs, refused to claim that Touvier acted under Nazi orders when he ordered the murder of his victims. This was one prosecutor who was unwilling to accept either the Cour de Cassation's 1985 decision or the Versailles Court's 1992 interpretation that narrowed the French interpretation of crimes against humanity. Instead, Klarsfeld tried to recontextualize the Touvier case so that the Court would return to the original definition of crimes against humanity that came from the Nuremberg Charter in the 1945 London Agreement. As this attorney explained in his book written about the decision:

The collusion between the Milice and the Gestapo in the concerted Final Solution plan of the Jewish Question is obvious. All Milice members pledged allegiance to Hitler, and in their hearts they wore the German uniform: that is, in fact, exactly how their fellow countrymen perceived them, seeming them as French Hitlerians totally aligned with the Nazi ideology. A France Hitlerian: that is what Paul Touvier was when he had seven Jews massacred at Tillieux-la-Pape.⁷⁴

Merchant contends that if one looks carefully at the "minds of the judges, jury, and public at large," it was not Prosecutor General Touzalin's closing address that garnered attention, but rather Arno Klarsfeld's plea that "underlined the historical veracity behind the massacre of seven Jews at Rillieux-la-Pape on June 29, 1944."⁷⁵ During his summation, Hubert de Touzalin had claimed that even if "the plan" for the Rillieux murders originated with the Nazis, the "complicity was French."⁷⁶

Given Touvier's admission that he had given the order that signaled the deaths of the seven Jews at Rillieux, the defense was hard-pressed to find some plausible defenses or mitigating circumstances that would explain the defendant's actions. They hit on the strategy of trying to argue that their client had sacrificed the lives of 7 victims following Henriot's assassination so that he could save the lives of perhaps 23 or maybe even 100 Jews. In the international press, this was called Touvier's "Schindler's Defense." Within the defense scenario, it had been Touvier's immediate superior, Victor de Bourmont of Lyons, who had panicked when he felt the pressure of German demands for reprisals. Touvier testified that Germans like Werner Knab wanted perhaps "a hundred Jews" to be selected, and that Touvier eventually convinced de Bourmont that this could be done in stages, beginning with only seven.⁷⁷

At this point in the trial, the leading judge in the case, Henri Boulard, began

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peppering Touvier with questions:

Boulard: "There were other solutions. You could have called Vichy."

Touvier: "I didn't have time."

Boulard: "You could have been brave and told the Germans, shoot me instead of the hostages."

Touvier: "That didn't occur to me either."

Boulard: "Yes, you and your men went into the big room where you kept your prisoners and told them to open their flies . . . to see if any were circumcised."

Touvier: "I wasn't there."⁷⁸

During his summation, Jacques Trémolet de Villers demanded that Touvier be acquitted, because at most the Rillieux murders constituted a war crime, and not a crime against humanity. For four hours, de Villers told his listeners that Touvier had been pardoned in 1971, in large part because of the efforts of clergy who believed in the importance of charity and forgiveness. For many months he had had the monumental task of keeping this case focused exclusively on the defendant's actions, but both the press and some members of the court had made this impossible. De Villers argued that at least three French Presidents_de Gaulle, Pompidou, and Mitterand_thought that France's wartime past should be buried, and he reminded his audience that Touvier was now "a tired, sick old man."⁷⁹

Touvier's chief defense attorney did his very best to try and make sure that his client did not become a metonymic symbol for all of the evils of Vichy France. At one point in his summation, de Villers told the Court:

[The trial was only of Mr. Touvier] not of a symbol, not of history, not of Vichy, not of France. . . .You are France, not the man in the dock. You are France, and you will give a historic verdict, but not a verdict on history. . . . You should not confuse pain and hate, memory and revenge, homage to the dead and vengeance against a man who was the involuntary instrument of their death. The dead do not demand an unjust condemnation.⁸⁰

The French tribunal that heard the case was not convinced. On April 19, 1994, the Versailles Court determined that Touvier had indeed committed crimes against humanity. In spite of the statute of limitations on other war crimes and Pompidou's pardon, the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict, which had been reached by 12 members of this French jury ("By a majority of eight votes or more") ⁸¹ had taken some five and a half hours of deliberation.⁸² In spite of the herculean efforts of Jacques Trémolet de Villers, Touvier ultimately lost his case. Apparently the jury had not bought his rationalizations for the orders that he had given regarding the Rillieux victims. At the same time, it was held that his former status as an official of the French Milice had allowed him to be in a position where he was complicit in crimes against humanity.⁸³ The presiding judge remarked that these murders "fell into the framework of a concerted plan carried out by a state practicing a policy of ideological hegemony."⁸⁴ This meant that the

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Rillieux murders had been committed by individuals who selected them for punishment because of their racial or religious attributes.

After the trial, de Villers filed a formal appeal, but there was little chance that the verdict would be overturned.⁸⁵ Once again, critics who defended such trials talked about their important pedagogical functions. French citizens and jurists were no longer going to avoid discussion of Vichy's anti-Semitic past. Alain Jacubowicz, for example, remarked that this "painful page in our history cannot be turned before it is written."⁸⁶ For many years Europeans had known about the tens of thousands who had died in the purges, but they were just beginning to realize the extent of French acquiesce in the rounding up, deportation, and death of many French and foreign Jews.

On July 17, 1996, Paul Touvier died in prison. Even this did not end speculations about the problematic nature of such trials. Many critics of the trial, both inside and outside France, considered Touvier to be a "small fish" who had no where near the power of a Bousquet or Papon. Perhaps the most scathing review of the trial came from Conan and Rousso, who claimed that these proceedings were of doubtful pedagogical or historical value.⁸⁷ As far as they were concerned, the prosecution had won their case, but at a very high price. Patrick Manham made this prognosis in February of 1994:

One could add that to put a man [sic] on trial in order to teach children a history lesson is a perversion of justice. In the Barbie case, loathing of the accused's beliefs and actions was considered an adequate justification for numerous breaches of the essential rules of a fair trial. The calm procedures of the courtroom were replaced by the frantic rituals of a national psycho-drama. The same process is now well under way in Touvier case.⁸⁸

Defenders of the Versailles court responded by talking about the importance of the case for French posterity. Merchant, for example, was convinced that the "Touvier trial must be considered one of the most constructive elements contributing to France's memory of the Vichy period."⁸⁹ The younger children who learned about the Vichy years during the trial were not the only potential beneficiaries of Touvier's trial. Hubert de Touzalin, one of the key advocate generals in the case, told the Court that he had learned a great deal about the Vichy regime, France's anti-Semitism, the passage of anti-Jewish laws, and the power of the militia during World War II.⁹⁰

Yet even the Touvier trial did not expiate all French guilt. Yes, more liberal interpretations of "crimes against humanity" were implicating a widening circle of perpetrators, but one wonders about the political pressures behind the trials, the use of legal formalism as a way of explaining sudden turnarounds in decisions or interpretations. Granted, Touvier was ultimately convicted of crimes against humanity, but the arguments and scenarios that had been used in the trial were crafted in such a way that they explained away Vichy complicity, so that the spotlight was once again placed on the Nazis and their minions.

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Conclusion

One must admit that these trials became highly publicized events, that were interpreted by some as having taught valuable Holocaust "lessons." Yet I would argue that in the vast majority of Holocaust trials, these judicial forums are not equipped to provide any type of closure for the preservation of Holocaust memories. Given the polysemic and political nature of Holocaust memories, the settlement of a single case may provide an end to the legal trial of a single individual or group, but these forums cannot freeze either our legal histories or our public memories.

Given the public and legal nature of these trials, it also is important that communication scholars take up the issue of how we want to remember particularly traumatic historical moments. Professor Blair, for example, has recently noted that rhetoric critics need to pay attention to the ways that particular memories are conveyed in public settings. In her short analysis of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), she explains that she is bothered by the ethical implications that come from displays that purposely create "physical discomfort."⁹¹

I am similarly bothered by the growing popularity of international Holocaust trials, that are used for a variety of communicative purposes that go beyond the simple determination of the guilt or innocence of the individual who comes before the court in search of justice. There is a vast amount of difference between the establishment of a prima facie case against a witness, and the use of that trial as a forum for the expiation of national guilt, a project that shows a new administration's willingness to remember when others forget, or the need for "compensing the slain."⁹² As Manham noted, these larger societal goals end up overwhelming the primary task of determining individual guilt or innocence.

The growth of the Holocaust denial movement and the passage of years mandate that we never forget the Judeocide, but we need to be cognizant of the fact that there are many other extra-judicial forums that can be used for this type of memory-work. Moreover, a rhetorical analyses of the Barbie and Touvier trials shows us how some of these forums can sometimes be used to avoid grappling with the uniqueness of the Holocaust or the complicity of large communities. For example, the French rules of evidence allowed Jacques Verges to turn the Barbie trial into an interrogation of human rights violations during the French war with Algeria, a permutation of the normalization debates that were taking place all over Europe during the 1980s. Some of the judges and lawyers who participated in the Touvier trial could also avoid grappling with all of the implications of the Vichy syndrome, by using procedural rules to bracket out painful memories and politically uncomfortable findings.

It is very possible that these discussions that took place both inside and outside the halls of justice did provide some communicative benefits_they were considered by some to be therapeutic for some French individuals and communities. Yet these cases have also provided us with illustrations of the fine line that exists between "legal" and "moral" responsibility. Todorov and Anzalone, two critics who openly attacked some of the procedures and goals of a later trial, noted that here was little question that some of the Vichy politicians were "morally culpable" for not distancing themselves from the politics of the French state under Marshall

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Pétain.⁹³ The key question for decision-makers involves the issue of whether courts should play a key role in the preservation of inherently selective Holocaust histories. These trials often end up telling us more about contemporary political alliances and modern needs, then they do about what happened during the World War II years.

Given the cultural milieu that surrounded the Barbie and Touvier trials, one can readily understand some of the reasons for the procedural and ideological maneuvering that took place both inside and outside of these courtrooms. This raises the question of the fairness of the proceedings when we understand the role that memory-work played in the mercurial changes

that took place in the interpretations of Nuremberg principles or applications of statutes of limitations. For example, the Touvier cases, with the constant clash of opinion on the part of the Parisian and Versailles courts, show the fragile and contingent nature of both the prosecutorial and defense positions.

Couldn't these lessons have been taught outside of the courtroom? For example, the catalyzing Holocaust memory-work has already been accomplished, as evidenced by the fact that many academicians and politicians are now more than willing to help deconstruct the Gaullist myths of resistance. In 1995 French President Jacques Chirac publicly admitted that all of the nation was responsible for the deportation of more than 75,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps, and now listeners and readers were learning more about the Vèlodròme d'Hiver stadium in Paris that had been used in 1942 as an embarkation point for Jews who would leave the country. At the same time, French writers and scholars have released a tide of works spanning every mode of memory retrieval: "historical, documentary, autobiographical, analytical, fictional."⁹⁴ If we need to find a cure for the Vichy syndrome, it can be found in the very process of arguing about, and researching the Holocaust.

Communication scholars should therefore view this rhetorical analysis of the Barbie and Touvier trials as a cautionary tale, that reminds us of the importance of open debate, and the contentious nature of memory-work. Professor Schwartzman has recently argued that when we attempt to review the communicative dimensions of Holocaust histories and memories, we need to remember that the "narrator" often "has a personal stake in recounting the past."⁹⁵ Given complexities and ideological nature of Holocaust memory-work, we need to acknowledge that there may be times when legal decision-makers have to confront the inherent limitations of their own forums. The goal of making final decisions and gaining closure does not work well in situations where we need open communication and the exchange of ideas. Legal involvement in the preservation of particular Holocaust memories may serve the needs of some constituencies, but they may end up being superfluous and counterproductive.

Notes

The author would like to thank all of the editors and reviewers of Speaker and Gavel who looked at this essay and who offered some very helpful and provocative comments. He would also like to thank Dean Robert Newman and the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah for providing him with

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much needed time so that he could make the revisions that were needed for the publication of this manuscript.

Endnotes

1. Ted Morgan, "The Hidden Henchman," The New York Times Magazine, May 22, 1994, sec. VI, pp. 31-32.

2. See, for example, the various perspectives on history, memory, and rhetoric that appear in Carole Blair, Marsha S. Jeppeson, and Enrico Pucci, "Public Memorialization in Postmodernity: The Vietnam Memorial as Prototype," The Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 263-288; Stephen H. Browne, "Reading, Rhetoric, and the Texture of Public Memory," The Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1993): 237-250; J. Robert Cox, "Memory, Critical Theory, and the Argument From History," Argumentation and Advocacy 27 (1990): 1-13; Greg Dickinson, "Memories For Sale: Nostalgia and the Construction of Identity in Old Pasadena," Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997):1-27; Marouf Hasian, Jr. and Robert E. Frank, "Rhetoric, History, and Collective Memory: Decoding the Goldhagen Debates," Western Journal of Communication 63 (1999): 95-114; Victoria J. Gallagher, "Remembering Together: Rhetorical Integration and the Case of Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial," The Southern Communication Journal 60 (1995): 109-119. Tamar Katriel, "Our Future is Where Our Past Is:" Studying Heritage Museums as Ideological and Performative Arenas," Communication Monographs, 60 (1993): 69-75; Tamar Katriel, "Sites of Memory: Discourse of the Past in Israeli Pioneering Settlement Museums," Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 1-20; Kathleen J. Turner, ed., Doing Rhetorical History: Cases and Concepts, (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1998).

3. For an interesting discussion of some of the reasons for this scholarly interest in memory, see Michael S. Roth, The Ironist's Cage: Memory, Trauma, and the Construction of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

4. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), ix.

5. Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 2.

6. A. Susan Owen and Peter Ehrenhaus, "Towards a Visual Rhetoric of Witness: Reflections on the Representation of Traumatic Memory," paper presented at the First Annual Visual Rhetoric Conference, 2000.

7. Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera's Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

8. Roy Schwartzman, "Review Essay: Recovering the Lost Canon: Public Memory and the Holocaust," Rhetoric and Public Affairs 4 (2001): 544.

9. The "Vichy Syndrome" involves the idea that various French communities suffer from a traumatic malady (on both the right and the left parts of the political spectrum) that allows collectives to valorize the tales of French resistance, while at the same time repressing the possibility of extensive Vichy complicity with the Germans during World War II. See Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944, trans. Arthur

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Goldhammer (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1996), 7-11.

10. Stanley Hoffmann, "Foreword," Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995_originally published in 1981), ix-x.

11. R. Scullion, "Unforgettable: History, Memory and the Vichy Syndrome," Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 23 (Winter, 1999): 14.

12. The Milice were the powerful paramilitary arm of the Vichy regime, that had an incredible amount of power in both the police and legal systems of France during World War II. See Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome, 20-22.

13. Lawrence Douglas, "History, Memory and Crimes Against Humanity: A Response to Todorov," Salmagundi 129 (2001): 320.

14. Douglas, "History," 320.

15. For an excellent commentary on the difficulties of reconciling the French judicial search for univocal meanings with scholars' interest in polyvocal histories, see Vivian G. Curran, "The Legalization of Racism in a Constitutional State: Democracy's Suicide in Vichy France," Hastings Law Journal 50 (November, 1998): 90.

16. Klaus Barbie, quoted in Flora Lewis, "Foreign Affairs: A Model of French Justice," The New York Times, July 6, 1987, p. A-31.

17. Note here, for example, the early work of Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972).

18. Brendan Murphy, The Butcher of Lyon: The Story of Infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie (New York: Empire Books, 1983), 12. See Ted Morgan, "Voices From the Barbie Trial," The New York Times, August 2, 1987, Section VII, p. 24; Wolfgang Saxon, "Klaus Barbie, 77, Lyons Gestapo Chief," The New York Times, September 26,1991, p. D_22.

19. For the initial governmental report on the U.S. involvement with Barbie, see Allan A. Ryan, Klaus Barbie and the United States Government: The Report, with Documentary Appendix, to the Attorney General of the United States (Frederick, Md: University Publications of America, 1984). For some critical assessments of this involvement, see Christopher Anthony West, Klaus Barbie and the United States Army Counterintelligence Corps, 1947-1951: A Violation of Denazification Agreements (M.A thesis, James Madison University, 1993).

20. Peter Hellman, "`Butcher' at Bay: The Dramatic Untold Story of How Infamous Gestapo Officer Klaus Barbie Was Finally Brought to Justice," Life, February, 1985, pp. 68-70.

21. Tom Bower, "A Killer Goes to Ground," The [London] Times, September 20, 1983, p. 7.

22. Guyora Binder, "Representing Nazism: Advocacy and identity at the Trial of Klaus Barbie," The Yale Law Journal 98 (1989):1342-1344.

23. Paul L. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial: French Heart of Darkness," The Los Angeles Times, July 5,1987, sec.V, p. 2.

24. Barbie could not be tried again for the earlier war crimes convictions because French laws included a 20-year statute of limitations that had run on the previous charges. Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

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25. Douglas, "History," 321. In order to catch more German perpetrators, France had changed her laws on imprescriptability and crimes against humanity as early as 1964. Curran, "The Legalization," 74.

26. Allan A. Ryan, Jr., "Klaus Barbie and the United States Government: A Reply to Mr. Justice Goldberg," Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 20 (1985): 71.

27. Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

28. Richard Bernstein, "Six Witnesses Take the Stand in Barbie's Defense," The New York Times, June 16, 1987, p. A-13.

29. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

30. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

31. Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

32. Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

33. Some of these excuses included that Barbie was simply following order when he shipped hundreds and Jews and resisters to the camps, that his signature was not on the deportation orders of the 44 Jewish children from Izieu, that members of the Vichy regime were no different from the ruling French parties during the Algerian troubles, and that nations should forgive and forget after wartime. See William Echikson, "Barbie Trial Draws to Close After Moments of Remembering and Drama," The Christian Science Monitor, July 3, 1987, p. 8.

34. For an excellent overview of the ideological divisions that existed in France and Algeria at this time, see Martin Evans, The Memory of Resistance: French Opposition to the Algerian War (1954-1962) (Oxford: Berg, 1997).

35. Bernstein, "Six Witnesses," A-13.

36. Bernstein, "Six Witnesses," A-13.

37. Bernstein, "Six Witnesses," A-13.

38. "During the months preceding the trial," noted Echikson, "Defense attorney Jacques Verges repeatedly promised to put France itself in the dock for collaborating with the Nazis and for human-rights violations during the country's war with Algerian rebels in the 1950s." Echikson, "Barbie Trial," 8. Echikson goes on to explain that in spite of this threat, "many thought his performance turned out to be anticlimactic" (8).

39. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

40. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

41. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

42. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

43. Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

44. Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

45. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

46. Tamar Golan, quoted in Lewis, "A Model," A-31.

47. William Echikson, "French As Who Is On Trial: Barbie or Resistance?" The Christian Science Monitor, May 28 1987, p. 9.

48. Montgomery, "Barbie Trial," V-2.

49. Paul Touvier, quoted in Alan Riding, "Frenchman Convicted of Crimes Against the Jews in `44. The New York Times, May 20, 1994, p. A-3.

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50. Jacques Trémolet de Villers, quoted in Sarah Chayes, "Exorcising Vichy: The Trial of Paul Touvier for Crimes Against Humanity," Massachusetts Review 36 (1995): 425.

51. Jennifer Merchant, "History, Memory, and Justice: The Touvier Trial in France," Journal of Criminal Justice 23 (1995): 425.

52. See S. Klarsfeld, Le Mémorial de la Déportation Des Juifs de France (Paris: Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, 1978).

53. Patrick Marnham, "Henchman of the Gestapo," The London Times, February 23, 1994, p. 14.

54. Morgan, "The Hidden," 31.

55. Morgan, "The Hidden," 32.

56. Morgan, "The Hidden," 32.

57. Patrick Marnham, "Henchman of the Gestapo," The London Times, February 23, 1994, p. 14.

58. Morgan, "The Hidden," 32.

59. Marnham, "Henchman," 14.

60. Marnham, "Henchman," 14.

61. Bruno Barrillot and Mary D. Davis, "Winking at War Crimes: France's Touvier Affair Taints Church and State," Washington Post, July 2,1989, p. C-1.

62. Tzvetan Todorov, "Letter from Paris: The Touvier Trial," Salmagundi 106/107 (Spring/Summer 1995): 3.

63. Todorov, T., & Anzalone, J. (1999, Winter/Spring). "Letter from Paris: The Papon Trial," Salmagundi 121/122 (Winter/Spring, 1999): 1-9. Todorov and Anzalone, "The Touvier," 3.

64. Todorov, "The Touvier Trial," 3.

65. If the seven victims who were shot at Rillieux had been selected by Touvier because they were resistance measures, then these atrocities might be labeled war crimes and were thus subject to the French statute of limitations

66. Morgan, "The Hidden," 32.

67. Morgan, "The Hidden," 35.

68. Morgan, "The Hidden," 35.

69. Morgan, "The Hidden," 34.

70. Todorov, "The Touvier Trial," 3.

71. "Justice Delayed," 17.

72. "Justice Delayed," 17.

73. For a valorization of Arno Klarsfeld's work as perhaps the best prosecutorial position in Touvier, see Merchant, "History, Memory," 426-432. Merchant argues that Klarsfeld's "judicial rhetoric" was somehow "bypassed," which assumes that there are some legal positions that can magically exist independent of rhetoric. I would of course argue that Klarsfeld was simply deploying a different rhetorical configuration.

74. Arno Klarsfeld, Touvier, Une Crime Français (Paris: Fayard. 1994),103, 108-109. Jennifer Merchant's translation.

75. Merchant, "History, Memory," 426.

76. Hubert de Touzalin, quoted in Riding, "Frenchman," A-31.

77. Morgan, "The Hidden," 32. For a British account that seems to buy Touvier's

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story of negotiating this number down to seven, see Marnham, "Henchman," 14. Amount the victims was a lawyer, a toymaker, a leather worker, and a house decorator.

78. Morgan, "The Hidden," 31.

79. Jacques Trémolet de Villers, quoted in Riding, "Frenchman Convicted," A-3.

80. Jacques Trémolet de Villers, quoted in Riding, "Frenchman Convicted," A-3.

81. Chayes, "Exorcising," 425. In the French legal system, regardless of the exact breakdown of individual decisions, the final decision is always read off as one that was reached "By a majority of eight votes or more . . ."

82. Riding, "Frenchman Convicted," A-3.

83. Merchant, "History, Memory," 425.

84. Chayes, "Exorcising," 425.

85. Riding, "Frenchman Convicted," A-3.

86. Alain Jacubowicz, quoted in Riding, "Frenchman," A-3.

87. Conan and Rousso, Vichy, 74-123.

88. Marnham, "Henchman," 14.

89. Merchant, "History, Memory," 426.

90. "Justice Delayed," 17.

91. Carole Blair, "Reflections on Criticism and Bodies: Parables from Public Places," Western Journal of Communication 65 (2001): 287.

92. Lawrence Douglas, The Memory, 1.

93. Todorov and Anzalone, "Letter," 1.

94. C. Trueheart, "Letter from France," The Washington Post, November 2, 1997, p. X-15.

95. Schwartzman, "Recovering," 557.

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Metaphysical Tales of Hate and Differánce:

A Narrative Analysis

of Gayman's "The Book of Adam"

Scott R. Stroud

Introduction

As America continues to grow in economic and social areas, individual pockets of citizens are left in a state of bewilderment and alienation at the rapid change and destabilization of their once certain world (Bennett, 1995). In the minds of such individuals, the world has been irrevocably changed by the advent of information technology, large-scale immigration, and international instability risked by global weapons and alliances. These individuals, frightened and alarmed at the precarious position they perceive themselves to be occupying, often turn to groups that use the passionate lure of hatred and exclusion to gain back value and stability in their lives. One of the more violent and influential segments of this end of the political spectrum is the "Christian Identity" movement, which claims over 50,000 members. This loosely organized national movement emphasizes what they claim is the biblically privileged position of the white (Aryan) race over the "scheming" Jews, minorities, and other non-Aryans (Schamber, 1996).

A key rhetor in this small, yet violent movement is a pastor by the name of Dan Gayman (Danger, 1996). Among Gayman's activities in this movement is the publication of small pamphlets that disseminate his racist views to the general public. Following the direction of Nothstine, Blair, and Copeland (1996), this paper will engage in community-centered act of criticism that illuminates potentially dangerous sources of rhetorical motivation within contemporary society. An important part of a critic's task is to highlight themes that pose a significant risk for the continued safety of a freely informed and discursive society. As such, this paper will analyze one of Gayman's pamphlets entitled The Holy Bible: The Book of Adam's Race (Gayman, 199-), focusing on his portrayal of the white race ("Adam's race"). Using the methodology of narrative criticism, this paper will argue that Gayman's use of narrative creates a potentially captivating story of the Aryan race's relationship to God, at the expense of other races. Through his use of settings and character descriptions, Gayman constructs the white race as divinely superior to non-white races, and as such, leads the way for potentially troublesome actional stances toward these races by members of this pamphlet's audience. In

Scott R. Stroud (M.A., University of the Pacific) is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy, San José State University, San José, California, Scott_Stroud@hotmail.com. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2000 National Communication Association Conference, Seattle, Washington. Dr. Jon F. Schamber, (University of the Pacific) and an anonymous referees are to be thanked for their helpful comments on this manuscript.

Speaker and Gavel, Vol. 39 (2002), 23-35

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order to place this pamphlet in context, a brief overview of the Christian Identity movement, from its inception in Britain in the late 1700s to present day American advocates, such as Dan Gayman, shall be provided. The text will be described, followed by a description of the theoretical apparatus of narrative theory. Through this lens of narrative, Gayman's text will be argued to portray potentially dangerous characterizations of the white race, often at the expense of other racial groups. This paper does not purport to exhaust the meaning of the pamphlet in question; instead, it merely attempts to bring the light of critical reflection upon this largely unanalyzed text.

The Christian Identity Movement & Dan Gayman

While religion's influence in modern America is waning (Bennett, 1995), a virulent strain of racist ideology continues to exist at the fringe of right wing Christianity—the Christian Identity movement. This movement is a loosely organized constellation of groups with few commonalties outside of the biblically privileged status they confer on the white race and the hatred they share toward other races, especially the Jews (Carmichael, 1992).

The historical genesis of the modern American movement of Christian Identity occurred in Britain in the 1790s. Fear of the coming millennium and popular nationalism pushed many terrified British citizens toward the position espoused by Richard Brothers (1757-1824), who introduced the central tenet of "British Israelism;" the white Europeans (including the British) were the true "Jews"(Schamber, 1999). He presented the "idea of a direct link between Anglo-Saxons and Israelites"(Barkun, 1990, p. 122). At its inception, the British Israelite movement attempted to label the modern British as one of the "lost tribes" of Israel. Brothers was not the only founding member of this movement; John Wilson (1799-1870) and Frederick Robert Augustus Glover (1880-1881) were also involved in publishing books and spreading the British "claim" to Israelite status. This movement gained much sway in Britain, especially after the horrors of World War I. While the organization continued on into the 20^th century, its strength declined significantly (Schamber, 1999).

In the late-1800s, British Israelism found its way to America under the guise of "pyramidology" (Schamber, 1999). The Reverend Joseph Williams (1826-1882) was one of the first British Israelite leaders in America; he published The Trio and the Trumpet of Israel, but was not able to keep them in print for very long (Schamber, 1999). Powerful and influential leaders that followed Williams in America were Reverend Joseph Wild, George Greenwood, and Reverend Matthew Mays Eshelm (Schamber, 1999). These individuals all preached that the "white seed" in America was the true tribe that is spoken of as supreme in the Bible; this message slowly evolved into one of exclusion and hatred toward all other races (including the Jews) in the 1920's (Simonelli, 1996).

Charles A. L. Totten (1851-1908) began this evolution into an exclusionary theology by courting premillennialists in America. He published several works on this topic which "blended the tenets of Anglo-Israelism with Anglo-Saxonism, a secular movement based on the notion that the Anglo-Saxon race was naturally superior and destined to rule the world"(Schamber, 1999, p. 6). In the 1920's,

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Reverend John Harden Allen (1847-1930) held an influential position within the Identity movement, publishing books that furthered the evolution of this movement into it current form. Also playing a noticeable role was William J. Cameron, who was charged with using Henry Ford's newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to disseminate radically anti-Semitic articles (Schamber, 1996).

After World War II, the Christian Identity movement turned more toward the racist and anti-Semitic end of the spectrum; leading this charge were Gerald L. K. Smith (1898-1975) and his disciple, Wesley A. Swift (1913-1970). Smith founded the Christian Nationalist Crusade and published The Cross and the Flag in order to air his white-supremacy views. Swift "is considered by many to be the father of the contemporary Identity movement"(Schamber, 1999, p. 11). He founded the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian in 1946. Swift was active in denouncing Catholics, minorities, and Jews in his quest for racial purity in America (Schwartz, 1983).

This movement toward racist hate theology was cemented into its modern form by the actions of Richard Girnt Butler. Butler founded the Aryan Nations Church, which was "openly tied to Klan and Nazi groups and describes itself as a white theopolitical movement whose goal is the re-establishment of white Aryan sovereignty"(Young, 1990, p. 153). This group is known for its violent tactics and vehemently hateful rhetoric. For around twenty years, Butler "has hosted the Aryan World Congress, an annual event which at its peak drew up to three hundred neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and Identity believers"(Schamber, 1999, p. 13). Many of the current Christian Identity leaders draw their doctrine and preaching styles from Butler, since he operates an effective clearinghouse for racist documents (Schamber, 1996).

The Role of Pastor Dan Gayman

In 1972, Pastor Dan Gayman formed The Church of Israel, an Identity church that was to become the vehicle for the spread of his influential views (Young, 1990). Gayman is "regarded as one of the leading preachers of the contemporary Christian Identity movement"(Schamber & Ehrhardt, 1995, p. 19). He has spoke in front of many identity groups and has published various influential works, including The Two Seeds of Genesis 3:15. It is this book that best summarizes his ideology and place in the movement. Gayman indicates "the biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve as recorded in Genesis not only provides a description of the original sin, but also explains the origin of the Jews as a Satanic Race"(Schamber & Ehrhardt, 1995, p. 19). Gayman argues that Eve's sin was in copulating with Satan (thereby producing Cain), and Adam's sin was in copulating with Eve after she had been defiled (Gayman, 1994). It is from the seed of Cain that the Jews are born; thus, they are literally the children of Satan. Adam's seed, on the other hand is Abel and Abraham; members of the white race is therefore the children of Adam, made in the image of God.

Gayman has translated his racist views into action; his church actively propagates and publishes his works, and he has been connected with some notorious individuals on the far right. He has spoken at Butler's Aryan World Congress and has been federally implicated as having ties to The Order, an extremely violent para-military group (Danger, 1996). Also, Gayman has admitted to supporting

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David Duke in his Presidential candidacy; "I was convinced then and remain convinced that he [Duke] has a genuine interest in the preservation of the Caucasian race and for our country in general"(Danger, 1996, p. 54).

While Gayman is not afraid to air his racist and dangerous comments in public, his church has sought to attain a "quietist posture, as they seek primarily to withdraw to the greatest possible degree from a society seen as inherently contaminating"(Kaplan, 1993, p. 31). This trend might be changing; indications of renewed missionary activity have been observed. As indicated in a flyer from 1995, "the Church of Israel launched a new `outreach ministry designed to bring the voice of the prophets and the faith of the apostles to the lost sheep of the House of Israel'…. Gayman [has] held meetings in various Western cities designed to introduce people to the Church of Israel and its philosophy"(Danger, 1996, p. 54). This could signal the beginning of a disturbing new trend of expansion for the Identity-affiliated Church of Israel.

"The Holy Bible: The Book of Adam's Race"

Many of the Christian Identity groups publish inexpensive pamphlets that allow for wide dispersion among the public. These pamphlets are usually free, fairly short, and written in a simple manner. This study focuses on a pamphlet titled entitled The Holy Bible: The Book of Adam's Race by Pastor Dan Gayman. This document attempts to convey to the reader the nature of the white race as being that of "Adam's seed." The Bible is conceived of as the white race's spiritual heritage, and must be protected against the pollution of non-Aryans. On the first page of text, Gayman (199-) indicates a fundamental claim for his arguments to come; he states "Adam man was the beginning of the White Race upon this earth"(p. 1). The rest of the text proceeds from this point, "proving" the special nature and essence of the white race. The reader is not only "dazzled" by Gayman's frequent use of biblical scripture and concordances, but is also commanded by the text on the cover to "Read it and Pass it on"(Gayman, 199-, Cover).

Narrative Theory

This text, due to its use of plot and characters to captivate modern audiences, shall be analyzed using the insights of narrative theory. Much research has focused on using this method of criticism (Carpenter, 1986; Burgchardt, 1985; Lewis, 1987). Narrative theory has its roots in the work of MacIntyre (1981), who indicated, "man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal"(p. 201). This line of theory concerning the fundamental nature of human communication was developed in earnest by Fisher (1984; 1987). Fisher (1984) argued that the dominant paradigm for human interaction, the "rational world paradigm," was defunct and did not address all the aspects of human communication. It is this reaction against modernity that Toulmin (1992) recounts in his history of modernity and its influences on communication and thought. Thus, in Fisher's (1987) seminal work, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, he proposes that human communication takes the form of a narrative or story that can be examined and criticized accordingly. Two key areas of focus are labeled by Fisher (1984); narrative probability is

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"what constitutes a coherent story" and narrative fidelity concerns "whether the stories they [the audience] experience ring true with the stories they know to be true in their lives"(p. 8). Rosteck (1992) further explicates these concepts by discussing "split-reference," which in which a text refers to its own mimetic enactment and its applicability to the audience;

[a text] refer[s] both to the situation in the world and to itself. This split reference corresponds to the characteristics of narrative consistency and closure. As the rhetor constructs the connections between the narrative and the situation, the rhetor implicitly makes the case for the consistency of the narrative [narrative probability]. As the rhetor asks an audience to see the story as an example, the rhetor utilizes the narrative characteristic of closure [narrative fidelity]. (p. 30)

These overriding ideas should be within every narrative and should allow one to extract implications of power and value (McGee & Nelson, 1985).

Foss (1996) details some specific areas to describe and evaluate when examining a text's narrative; one should examine the details and interactions inherent in the setting, the characters, and actions/causal events (among other areas). This criticism will proceed by examining Gayman's (199-) pamphlet focusing on the settings and the various characters, and then analyzing the invited reaction the audience may entertain as a result of this narrative. Other areas of narrative analysis will be left for future research to address. Theoretically covering all of this are the ideas of narrative probability and fidelity; these are the ultimate adjudicators when considering audience acceptance or declination.

This inquiry argues that Gayman's narrative portrays the white race to the assumed white (receptive) audience in a potentially worrisome manner. This narrative has significant implications for action and judgments on the part of white audiences that find it significant in terms of narrative probability and fidelity. By portraying the white race as special in terms of characterization and spatial location, motives for actions intent on rending community and racial solidarity can be seen. Accordingly, the following analysis will focus mainly on character description and causal events as related to the white race (as portrayed by Gayman), since this is the audience from which most of Gayman's receptive audience shall be drawn.

Narrative Indicators of Racial Valuation

This narrative places the white race in a privileged position in the story. This section will describe some of the major ways that the white race is valued in this text, which will set the stage for criticism of the acceptance of this message by receptive audiences. Examination of the text revealed that the various settings were generally divisible into spatial and temporal locations. Additionally, the three main characters in this pamphlet, God, Adam's race, and "other races," are found to have differing traits and va