Jacques de Bernonville
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Jacques Dugé de Bernonville (December 20, 1897 – April 26, 1972) was a French collaborationist and senior police officer in the Vichy regime in France infamously known as the man who hunted down resistance fighters during World War II.
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[edit] Until 1945
Count Jacques Dugé de Bernonville was born in Paris to an aristocratic family. Raised among Jesuits, he was imprisoned several months in 1938, accused of having taken part in La Cagoule 's conspiracy, a far right terrorist group. However, he was released because of lack of proofs.
Following the 1940 defeat of France against Nazi Germany, Jacques de Bernonville joined the Vichy government and was made a commander of the Collaborationist Milice. Working in conjunction with head of the Milice Joseph Darnand, de Bernonville hunted down members of the French resistance movement who were almost always summarily executed. As a right-hand man to Klaus Barbie (later convicted for crimes against humanity), he was a major participant in the establishment and enforcing of the Vichy regime's program of anti-Semitic policies that carried out the deportation of thousands of French Jews and other "undesirables" to the Drancy deportation camp en route to Auschwitz and other German extermination camps.
[edit] Post-war escape to Canada
With the liberation of France by the Allied Forces, de Bernonville was charged with war crimes but fled the country. Tried in absentia by a French War Crimes tribunal in Toulouse, he was found guilty and condemned to death. Escaping French authorities in 1946, Jacques de Bernonville traveled to New York City and according to historians such as Kevin Henley, professor of history at Collège de Maisonneuve in Montreal, the politically powerful Roman Catholic priest, Lionel Groulx helped de Bernonville get into Quebec. There, Jacques de Bernonville was welcomed by a significant number of the Quebec nationalist elite but in 1948 Canadian immigration authorities discovered who he was and instituted deportation proceedings. In an attempt to keep de Bernonville in Canada, 143 Quebec notables signed a 1950 petition defending him and stating that he should be allowed to stay. Some of the signers included the secretary general of the Université de Montréal, Camillien Houde, mayor of the city of Montreal, plus two future cabinet ministers in the Parti Québécois government, Camille Laurin and Denis Lazure.
Faced with a deportation order, Jacques de Bernonville fled again, this time going to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1954 the French government was advised where he was but that country had no extradition treaty with France and he escaped punishment, the Supreme Court of Brazil refusing to extradite him in October 1957. Bernonville remained in Brazil until his murder in 1972, at the hands of his servant's son.
[edit] Additional reading
- The Bernonville Affair: A French War Criminal in Quebec After World War II – Yves Lavertu (1995) original French edition: L'affaire Bernonville: Le Québec face à Pétain et à la Collaboration (1948-1951) (1994).
- Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada, 1946-1956 - Howard Margolian (2000)
