In 1961, Maurice Papon was personally awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Charles de Gaulle, whose government had been struggling with the FLN insurgency.

Between the two rounds of the May 1981 presidential election, where Giscard d'Estaing was running for a second term, details about Papon's past were leaked in Le Canard enchaîné newspaper.

Documents signed by Papon were made public that showed his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Bordeaux Jews to Drancy internment camp from 1942–44.

Fellow students at the elite school were Georges Pompidou, later President of France, and René Brouillet, who would join Charles de Gaulle's cabinet after the war.

Papon entered Sciences-Po, the specialty university for future civil servants and politicians, and he studied law, psychology and sociology.

[1] He was named in the Ministry of Interior in July 1935 before he became chief of staff of the deputy director of departmental and communal affairs, in January 1936, under Maurice Sabatier.

[citation needed] In June 1936, during the Popular Front government, he was attached to the cabinet of Radical-Socialist François de Tessan, the vice-state secretary to the presidency of the council as well as a friend of his father.

Papon opted to serve the Vichy government, his mentors, Jean-Louis Dumesnil and Maurice Sabatier, having voted on 10 July 1940 to grant all power to Philippe Pétain.

[citation needed] From July 1942 to August 1944, 12 trains left Bordeaux for Drancy; about 1,600 Jews, including 130 children under 13, were deported; few survived.

[1] Some résistants questioned his activities, but Papon avoided being judged by the Comité départemental de libération (CDL) of Bordeaux for his role during Vichy, as he was protected by Gaston Cusin.

Maurice Sabatier, Papon's mentor and chief, was accused by the CDL of having "boasted" that his prefecture was one of the most efficient concerning the "percentage" of "deportations."

[1] Papon became chief of staff of the commissaire de la République, a high civil servant that replaced Vichy's prefects.

[1] Papon was first named prefect of the Landes department in August 1944 and then chief of staff of the commissaire of the Republic of Aquitaine, under Gaston Cusin.

A year later, he became secretary of state to the Ministry of Interior Jean Biondi of the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).

Eric Roussel, a De Gaulle biographer, wrote that to the general and president, who was concerned with the survival of the Republic against undemocratic movements:"the authority of the state is so sacred, the danger constituted by the communists so intolerable, that he is disposed to accept without too many problems of conscience men who may have, for a fairly long time, worked on behalf of Vichy.

He took part in the secret Gaullist meetings that assured the use of the crisis to prepare de Gaulle's nomination as President of the council and to grant him special powers.

[1] The French government reluctantly recognized 48 deaths, but the Paris Archives, consulted by historian David Assouline, note 70 persons dead.

Nine members of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) trade union, most of them communists, were killed at Charonne métro station by the police, directed by Papon under the same government.

[14] On the evening of 4–5 June 1977, a commando shot at workers on strike, killing CGT trade-unionist Pierre Maître and severely injuring two others.

[16] The publication of the 6 May article occurred four days before the second round of the presidential election, opposing candidate François Mitterrand, who would win the race, and incumbent president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing under whom Papon was a cabinet minister.

His adjunct, Jean Leguay, died of cancer in 1989 before he could go on trial, a decade after he had been indicted for crimes against humanity for his role in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in July 1942.

[17] Papon had begun writing his memoirs before his death; he criticised Chirac's official recognition of the involvement of the French state in the Holocaust.

[citation needed] While Papon claimed that he had worked to grant humane conditions of transport to the Camp of Mérignac, historians testified that his concerns were motivated by efficiency.

[16] Having proved that Papon had organized eight "death trains," the plaintiffs' lawyers recommended a 20-year prison term, as opposed to life imprisonment, which is usually the norm for such crimes.

[24] Papon applied for release on the grounds of poor health in March 2000, but President Jacques Chirac denied the petition three times.

Former Justice Minister Robert Badinter expressed support for the release, prompting indignation from relatives of the victims as well as Arno and Serge Klarsfeld.

The Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) criticised the inequality before the law, as Papon was freed but not other prisoners.

[26] In March 2004, the chancery of the Legion of Honour accused Papon of illegally wearing his decoration, which had been stripped of him after his conviction, while he was being photographed for a press interview for Le Point.

That triggered public expressions of indignation from all French political parties except Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front.

Papon's responsibility for the 1942 arrest and deportation of 1,600 Jews in and around Bordeaux – 223 children among them, all shipped off to the Drancy camp and then to Auschwitz – was proved without the proverbial shadow of a doubt at his 1998 trial.