David Rousset

David Rousset (January 18, 1912, Roanne, Loire — December 13, 1997) was a French writer and political activist, a recipient of Prix Renaudot, a French literary award. Survivor of the Neuengamme concentration camp and the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp, he is famous for his books about concentration camps.

He was the first person to use the term "Gulag" in French language, revealing to French the Soviet system of labor camps. In 1949, learning that the concentration camps destroyed in Nazi Germany still existed in the Soviet Union, he appealed to former inmates of Nazi camps to form a commission to inspect the USSR camps, which became the "International Commission Against Concentrationist Regimes".

For his efforts he was attacked by the French communist newspaper French Letters (fr:Les Lettres françaises), which accused him of slander of the Soviet Union, forging the texts of the Soviet laws, and misinformation. Rousset brought charges against the newspaper, and in 1951 he won the case.

Along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Gerard Rosenthal, Rousset was a founder of the left-wing Rassemblement démocratique révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Democratic Rally), which called for a European federation on democratic socialist lines.[1]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Wittner, Lawrence S. (1993–2003). The Struggle Against The Bomb 1. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 115. ISBN 0-80472-141-6.