'I Was Good And He Was Evil'

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By Newsweek Editors

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A half century late, French justice was about to catch up with Rene Bousquet. In 1942 and 1943, when he was head of police under the Vichy regime, he was responsible for sending more than 60,000 French Jews including 3,500 children-to Nazi death camps. Tried for treason in 1949, he received a five-year suspended sentence after convincing the court that he had once helped the Resistance movement; he went on to grow rich as a banker and businessman. But Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld finally persuaded the government to open a new case, and French prosecutors were prepared to bring Bousquet to trial this September on charges of crimes against humanity.

A self-appointed avenger named Christian Didier got to him first. One morning last week he went to Bousquet's Paris apartment with a pistol. When Bousquet, 84, came to the door, he shot him four times at point-blank range. Police arrested Didier and charged him with murder. Didier-a 49-year-old frustrated novelist-appeared to enjoy his moment in the spotlight. Before police arrived he summoned TV cameramen to a hotel in a Paris suburb and told them why he had killed Bousquet. "I was good and was evil," he said. "I wanted to do something good for humanity.' The assassination dismayed leaders of France's Jewish community. They had hoped that Bousquet's trial would finally force France to acknowledge the extent to which even many ordinary French citizens had collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation. "For 15 years I worked to get this case heard," said Klarsfeld. "In the general interest, Bousquet should have been tried."

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