Bidspirit auction | For the Truth About the

For the Truth About the Concentration Camps – David Rousset, Buchenwald Survivor, Issues an Indictment of the Soviet Forced Labor Camps. France, 1951 – First Edition - Pour la vérité sur les camps concentrationnaires (For the Truth About the Concentration Camps) - A record of the most famous and influential postwar trial in France, known as ”The David Rousset Affair” (La bataille de David Rousset). Written by Jean-Théodore Bernard and Gérard Rosenthal, the attorneys who represented Rousset throughout the case, and published by the French publishing house Le Pavois. France, 1951 - First edition. The historical background to this publication lies in the heated public controversy that arose in France over the existence of the Soviet forced labor camps and the Gulag system. David Rousset, a writer, politician, left-wing intellectual, and survivor of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, issued a public appeal in 1949 calling for the establishment of an international commission of former Nazi concentration camp prisoners to investigate reports concerning the Soviet system of forced labor camps. In response, the French Communist weekly Les Lettres Françaises published a scathing and defamatory article accusing Rousset of fabricating documents, spreading falsehoods, and inventing evidence for anti-Soviet political purposes. Rousset refused to remain silent and brought a libel suit against the newspaper and its editors, setting in motion what quickly became a dramatic public trial held in Paris between November 1950 and January 1951. During the proceedings, which deeply stirred French society and its intellectual circles, dozens of former Gulag prisoners testified and presented compelling evidence confirming the existence of the Soviet system of repression. Rousset won the case decisively. Published immediately afterward, this booklet summarizes the legal arguments, presents a complete transcript of the court proceedings, and makes the testimony available to the wider public, documenting the moral and legal victory that officially exposed the atrocities of the Stalinist regime to the Western left. In his appeal published in Le Figaro Littéraire on November 12, 1949, David Rousset wrote: ”I should like each one of us to come to his senses: imagine that we are once again assembled in the central square of Buchenwald, beneath the headlights of the vehicles and in the snow, listening to the orchestra and waiting to be counted. How would we judge other deportees who, after regaining their freedom, could speak only of their own suffering and never utter a word to declare that we, meanwhile, were still living in death? Even the grossest insults would pale by comparison. If we recognize that today millions of people are what we ourselves were yesterday, we shall know that we have forgotten.” He went on to demand that the commission formally request permission from the Soviet government to conduct its investigation inside the labor camps in the Soviet Union itself: ”The Government of the Soviet Union denies the accusation of crimes against humanity. The best way to demonstrate its good faith before world public opinion is to permit men who are themselves known as victims of Nazism to investigate freely its economic labor camps...”. The Paris court found the Communist newspaper Les Lettres Françaises and its editors, Pierre Daix and Claude Morgan, guilty of libel and defamation. The newspaper and its editors were ordered to pay fines and damages to Rousset, dealing a significant blow to the credibility of the French Communist press, which had sought to portray reports of the Gulag system as fabrications. On the public and cultural level, the trial provided the first official and highly public forum in France for exposing the atrocities of the Stalinist regime. During the proceedings, dozens of witnesses - former Gulag prisoners and survivors of the Soviet forced labor camps - testified, presenting compelling evidence and harrowing descriptions of the conditions of life, labor, and repression in the Soviet Union. (These detailed testimonies are reproduced in full in the present booklet.) Widely covered by the French and international press, their testimony compelled many Western intellectuals and members of the political left to confront the realities that existed behind the Iron Curtain. Institutionally, Rousset's victory paved the way for the realization of his original initiative: the establishment of the International Commission Against the Concentration Camp Regime (CICRC). Composed of former Nazi concentration camp prisoners, the Commission gained considerable moral authority and public legitimacy,