Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [92]
Four days later, Pastor Boegner went to the rue Saint-Dominique to ask for a commutation of Laval’s death sentence, since his trial had been such a travesty of justice. ‘If Laval is executed after what has happened,’ he said to de Gaulle, ‘will it really be an execution?’ Boegner watched his reaction carefully. Not a muscle moved on the General’s face. Laval’s lawyers had a similar experience. Their client could already have been dead. François Mauriac also wrote to Teitgen begging for a retrial, but received no reply.
Most executions took place at the fort of Montrouge, but Laval was shot at Fresnes. The official witnesses, including the Procurator-General, the presiding judge and Charles Luizet, the Prefect of Police, arrived at the prison soon after half past eight and went to the condemned cell on the ground floor. Laval, scorning his persecutors at the last moment, swallowed cyanide, which he must have kept concealed in his clothes. Almost immediately he went into convulsions. The official party panicked, not knowing what to do. The senior prison doctor called for a stomach pump. Céline observed later (in his other persona, as Dr Destouches) that the cyanide had almost certainly been spoiled by moisture. Others thought that Laval had failed to shake the phial.
It took over two hours to revive Laval sufficiently for execution. Half-carried, without his shoes, he was taken out and strapped to a chair. Laval apparently tried to rise to his feet as the firing squad took aim. Benoist-Méchin claimed that the soldiers were drunk with rum, given to steady their nerves during the wait. As the ragged volley was heard inside the prison, the inmates went into a rage, hammering on their cell doors with shoes and yelling: ‘Bandits! Salauds! Assassins!’
The government tried to keep the grisliest parts of Laval’s story from the people, but the news spread rapidly. France was split between those who felt that he deserved his fate, however it had been administered, and those sickened by the shameful episodes in court and afterwards. The question even provoked arguments within families. ‘The only time I ever struck my husband,’ said Liliane de Rothschild (her husband, Élie, had recently returned from his prison camp in Germany), ‘was when he said that Laval had been badly treated.’
Early in November 1945 a sale was held at the Hotel Drouot to dispose of the jewellery and furs confiscated fromprofiteers and collaborators. The prices obtained were far higher than expected in such impoverished times. A yellow diamond ring went for 4 million francs ($80,000 at the time). The audience was an extraordinary mixture of poor people come to see a bizarre form of justice carried out and ‘black-market queens’ in their new dresses by Lucien Lelong.
This event said much about the mood of the time. Nobody was satisfied, except for those who had profited and escaped the consequences of their actions. The épuration was both too harsh and too weak. The failure to pursue some of the greatest criminals, particularly those responsible for the deportation of Jews, compounded by an attempt to rewrite history and close the lid on the past, created greater trouble in years to come. Over a quarter of a century later, a new generation began to probe the shameful secrets of the Vichy years.
15
Hunger for the New
After the Occupation, the urge to express opinions was quite overwhelming for a cerebral society. Galtier-Boissière was amused by the instant outpouring of prose by the French writers who had refused to write for the collaborationist press. An astonishing number of newspapers and literary magazines appeared, feeding