All language subtitles for Nazi Hunters - Season 1, Episode 7 - Paul Touvier

he's france's worst villain

pounding jews persecuting jews

paul duvier's sent my mother to

auschwitz

members of the catholic church who were

pro-nazi helped him escape

my job is to arrest mr tuvy

finding the man is not going to be easy

they searched a number of monasteries

we were stepping into a sacred place

when i started nothing could stop

[Music]

world war ii has been over for 43 years

yet france's most notorious war criminal

is still at large

a nazi collaborator who murdered jews

and resistance fighters alike

now a high-ranking french detective has

the job of hunting him down

it was in march

1988

when a magistrate of the paris court

gave me

the two vehicles

colonel record

is someone who's very determined

when he decides to do something he'll do

everything he can to make it happen

over the years the french national

police have tried and failed to bring

the war criminal to justice

but colonel jean-louis recorded has a

hard-won reputation as a tough and

skilled investigator

his latest mission is top secret

for roughly 40 years

2va was hidden somewhere and

nobody

was able to arrest him

going through the two va case files rico

dawn is transported back to one of the

darkest periods in french history

when the nazis invaded france

some frenchmen heroically resisted

others like paul tuvier wholeheartedly

collaborated

he worked with the germans during the

war

in fact they joined with german units to

actually fight against the resistance

as one of the leaders of a pro-nazi

paramilitary force

tuva's job was hunting down enemies of

the state

two va selected seven people and he said

himself it was because they were jewish

they were stood up against the wall and

shot

as simple as that

he's a france's worst villain

even in the 1980s there are people in

high places who collaborated with the

nazis

[Music]

people who are sympathetic to paul

tuvier

i was concerned about potential leaks

because i was fully aware about the fact

that in the french administration but

not only in the french administration in

the french society

to vie other

supporters

[Music]

when someone's been hiding for 40 years

the chances of finding him are next to

nothing

i mentioned to the magistrate the fact

that this case should be

an impossible mission

but when i started nothing could stop me

[Applause]

for this mission impossible colonel

rickardo teams up with seasoned

investigator dominique bellange

[Music]

when i received the portuguese file i

knew it was very sensitive our division

only dealt with very sensitive cases

it was a secret investigation

i was fully blind i would say i have no

information about his current physical

appearance of course

the problem

the problem with searching for

portuguese was that we didn't even know

if he was alive

[Music]

because at some point he had put a

notice in the newspaper

paul duvier is dead

but since there was no proof of his

death

i started to define the 2va networks

his relatives is supporters and all

people mentioning in the dossier

and i was interested by

one

fact

i noticed several times the influence of

the catholic church

it has long been rumored that paul

tuvier has been sheltered by elements

within the french catholic church

[Music]

he clearly had received some important

support

if it's true it wouldn't be the first

time that sympathetic clergy have aided

and abetted nazi fugitives

i think

members of the catholic church who were

pro-nazi helped people escape after the

war

the church had this tradition of

standing outside the secular authority

and assisting those people in trouble

without asking any questions

this part of the french story

is always very controversial

it does seem very fishy that everybody

who helped the nazis happen to be

connected to the catholic church

the hunt for war criminal paul tuvier

has exposed deep religious and political

divisions in france that date back

decades

[Music]

when the germans defeated france in 1940

they carved the nation in

half the nazis occupied the north in the

south they set up a puppet government

based in the town of vichy

[Music]

the vichy government created their own

version of the gestapo the fearsome

middle east the middle east was created

essentially as a paramilitary police

force to fight the resistance

it's an expression in its ideology of

the most extreme elements in

vichy it's overtly anti-semitic and 2va

made a career uh in the middle east and

he really took to it and he did so well

that he was promoted

he became the person in charge of

intelligence gathering for the police

office

he was an absolute

ideological fanatic the jews and the

resistance

these were enemies of france and they

were

to be

eliminated well after the war there was

a serious effort in france to purge

french society of people who had

collaborated with the germans

collaborators like paul tuvier who was

desperate to avoid the hangman's noose

to became a devout catholic family he

was a devout catholic himself

and when he looked around for help he

thought perhaps

the church could help him

i assumed the catholic church could be

an important element to be investigated

record all discovers that 2va's last

known mailing address

is the leon archdiocese

we wanted to obtain

the authorization

to examine the archives of the

archbishop

it was quite a delicate inquiry

the magistrate and the detective drive

300 miles south to lyon

[Music]

they decide the magistrate will meet

with the archbishop alone to gain his

trust

[Music]

[Music]

we obtained a meeting with

the archbishop but i stay outside

the archbishop office

[Music]

i was very anxious

[Music]

it was sensitive

the archbishop was very reluctant to

authorize the police to investigate a

catholic archives

recordors request to see the archive is

turned down flat

only fueling his suspicions

[Music]

for me it's an habit to meet numerous

people who don't want to cooperate with

me

is not a problem for me ok you don't

want to cooperate directly ok

i will use another

way nine months into the investigation

record law is convinced that tuvier is

being hidden by elements within the

catholic church

to remain impossible to find to stay

hidden while in france the perfect place

for this was a religious setting

whether in monasteries or abby's that

could shelter entire families or

individuals

police concentrate on the right-wing

fundamentalist movement within the

church

[Music]

we were focused mainly on one in the

monasteries

due to the fact that the two va worked

for a certain time in the 70s around

this monastery

it is the notre dame de dome monastery

in central france

[Music]

i decided to send belonging inside the

monastery in order to find some clues of

the presence of tuva or his family

officer bellagie goes undercover posing

as an ex-convict seeking charity

[Music]

we were stepping into a privileged

secretive place

it's another world cloistered and also

protected

[Music]

it was a very impenetrable system and

very effective

it's very difficult to infiltrate these

religious communities

there's an element of mistrust

very few lay people gain access

i worked there during the day and at

night had the run of the abbey

bellagio searches for clues

every detail we gathered motivated us

but the undercover operation yields

little

there were several people staying at the

monastery but none of them resembled

tuvye it was demoralizing

so the team tries another tag

they tap the phones of a number of

fundamentalist religious communities

we had created a network of phone taps

in every place where paul tuvier could

have been called

portugal

[Music]

all wire taping devices

were remotely connected

to the basement of my offices

when you do phone taps you hear many

different voices

but when you listen to the same people

constantly you start to recognize voices

you know how they speak what they're

talking about and who's there

that's the technique of phone tapping

and then we got a lucky break

an article appeared in a national

newspaper talking about paul tuffy's

relationship with elements of the church

by chance an investigative reporter has

also been delving into the war

criminal's past

like the police the reporter concludes

the tuvier is likely being helped by

catholic fundamentalists

the article gives investigators their

first major break

as soon as the article was published we

started overhearing phone conversations

certain people were worried about how

the press had discovered this

information

right after the article came out at one

point we heard a phrase we understood

perfectly to be

our friend paul is not going to be happy

for me it was marvelous very very nice

thing

and people were saying and

we have to help our friend paul

paul is now under surveillance we have

to take care of the one and so on

one call in particular offers a strong

lead

on the phone is jean-pierre lefeve

the head of a renegade right-wing

catholic group called the knights of

notre dame

the knights are part of the

fundamentalist movement

at the other end of the line dom lafond

abbot of a benedictine monastery called

saint paul de wisc

it seems

that the whisk monastery

on the the home of jean-pierre

could be two lengths of the chain

detectives have evidence linking war

criminal paul tuvier to a monastery in

northern france and the secret of

far-right catholic sect

[Music]

i decided with the agreement of the

magistrate to launch the operation

i sent two different teams

one in risk in order to make an

investigation in the monastery

and the other team to the home of

jean-pierre lefevre

the manhunt intensifies bellagio arrives

at the whisk monastery armed with a

search warrant

it wasn't normal practice to enter

religious institutions

he wanted to phone his superiors and

tell them what was happening

he thought

thinking we had no chance to find a tv

we conducted a search

lefone didn't believe it police just

didn't search a convent

[Music]

belanger grills the abbott

but lafall insists he knows

[Music]

he realized we weren't going anywhere

eventually the abbott cracks

in a startling admission he reveals he

is part of a conspiracy to protect paul

tuvier

he puts us on to the knights of notre

dame

[Music]

now detectives pull in the leader of the

catholic sect joel pierre lefeve for

questioning

when jean-pierre lefeve was in the hand

of an investigator for interrogation he

started to deny to no to va

but the teams already discovered that

lefeve and truvier share a dark past

the militant religious leader once

fought alongside nazi ss officers

in the basement

of the house of jean-pierre

the investigators discovered numerous

documents related to world war ii

like paul tuvier the thev was one of

thousands of french who betrayed his

country

duvier worked closely with the notorious

klaus barbie

[Music]

barbie was known as the butcher of lyon

duvier the hangman of lyon

klaus barbie was the head of the

intelligence branch of the gestapo

office in leo and tuv8 was the head of

the intelligence branch of the police

office

in in leo and they were certainly in the

same line of work

but barbie was german duvier had no such

excuse

he was a traitor who terrorized his own

countrymen

80 000 jews

died in france during the occupation

about 76 000 of them were deported

his activities as a member of the

mideast

combine

hounding jews persecuting chasing down

jews fighting the resistance but also he

becomes very much of a mafia-like figure

vladimir's aunt's mother was at a lyon

synagogue when tuvier and his henchmen

showed up

paul tuvier come

with his truck

and

stop in front of the synagogue till seat

and some

men

entered the synagogue

he took

all jewish people among them my mother

and was

invited to a prison in yeon

then deported

to auschwitz

[Music]

it is crimes like this that have led

detectives to question the leader of the

knights of notre dame about paul tuvier

[Music]

several hours later the investigator

came in my office

saying he don't want to speak he don't

want to cooperate

[Music]

it's why i decided to join the

interrogation

recorder tries a ruse to get his witness

to open up

i made a remark

saying there is other hunters who are on

the track of portuguese

and these people are going to work for

their own interests and are very ill

intentioned regarding poltergei

when i said this

le favre look at me carefully

[Music]

i shred the shoulders

it could be

he hopes lefeve will think it's safer to

turn tuvi over to police than to risk

nazi hunters like the clarksvilles or

simon wiesenthal getting hold of him

and i said if something wrong happened

to tuyere on this family you will be

responsible

[Music]

the ploy works

the former ss officer admits the knights

of notre dame have been funneling money

to the war criminal

lefevre told me that each monster is

sent

three thousand french franc roughly 600

us dollars

to a women located in paris

paul tuvier's flight from justice has

been more than 40 years in the making

after the war he was convicted in

absentia of treason and war crimes

2va it manages to stay in hiding and to

survive until the 20-year statute of

limitations runs out on on the charges

against him

what he wanted was to be able to inherit

and to move back into his father's home

move in with his wife and children lead

a normal life if you will

while the charges against duvet had

expired he was still banned from owning

property in his hometown

he was keen to reclaim his property and

his reputation

the only way he could get an inheritance

when his dad died was to get a

presidential pardon from president

pompadou

[Music]

in the 1960s and 70s 2va still had

friends high in the french government

and clergy

after a long and vigorous campaign by a

sympathetic bishop

in november 1971 he received his partner

when president pompey do pardon him of

his last remaining charges it backfired

protests erupted across france

famous nazi hunters serge and biata

clarksfeld spearheaded the

demonstrations

the reaction of

the world of the resistance

was

impressive

many protests there was outrage that

first of all that these crimes had

essentially gone unpunished after all

regardless of the legal questions i mean

this man was a murderer unquestionably a

murderer

we protested immediately and we invaded

even

the house of duvier

duvier was under siege

desperate he agreed to do a television

interview in disguise to defend his war

records

but his victims weren't fooled they

filed lawsuits against troublier

result he was now charged with crimes

against humanity charges which hold no

statute of limitation duvier goes from

being a man who looks like he's going to

slide back into kind of a comfortable

anonymity and live in his family home

to a celebrity of of of the worst kind

and then he's forced to go into hiding

again

it's these charges of crimes against

humanity that have led record all and

his men to pursue paul tuvier

now the detectives follow the money

trail to paris

and the elderly secretary of a catholic

charity

we confirmed that there was a network

set up to collect money

the money was passed on to tuvye through

a woman named genevieve

[Music]

the record arm pays a visit to penue to

question her about the money

i explained to this woman the purpose of

my investigation

but she answered she don't want

to help

i was amazed by this kind of answer

[Music]

finally

record all wears her down

she requested to phone a priest

in order to obtain his agreement

because she don't want to be in

infringement

with divine justice it was it was

amazing it was amazing

the priest

advised

the woman please give the information to

the investigator

madame panu reveals that she has been

sending money to paul tuvier at a

fundamentalist carmelite convent 200

miles south of paris

[Music]

forever it was an obligation according

to the catholic role to help this family

[Music]

at this stage of the investigation

things started to accelerate very

quickly

so the team left paris by playing

at that time the police had their own

planes and four of us left

another group went by car

with you after four decades the net is

closing on paul tuvier

but there is a real danger if he gets

wind of the operation he will vanish

it's why i decided to move very quickly

french detectives are closing in on war

criminal paul tuvier

they have flown to his last known hiding

place a convent 200 miles south of paris

a sister was surprised about the huge

number of police officers in front of

her

i said i am in charge to perform an

investigation in your convent

we met the mother superior and the abbot

we told them why we were there we had to

conduct a search

the team questions the nuns while record

all confronts the abbot

and i started to interrogate this priest

to here i don't know to be

there was a small chapel behind some

buildings and garages

i was at the entrance

discussing with the priest

when one of an investigator came to me

saying we have found some suitcases with

the name of paula

in one building we found some cases

labeled with the name that we recognized

as one of paul duvet's aliases

we opened the cases and discovered paul

tuvier's past

history

and the first thing

we saw was the iron cross

i look at the

priest you don't know to va

my investigator look at the documents

paul tuve to va and

you don't know this guy

investigators haven't found the war

criminal but they have found solid proof

that the fundamentalists have been

sheltering him

in one trunk they discover writings by

nazi propagandist philippe penrio

it is a direct link to one of the worst

wartime atrocities committed by tuvy

was

the minister of propaganda under vichy

and he was a hero of the milies

philippe reo was an extremely effective

radio commentator

he was

doing quite a lot of damage to the

allied cars

he was really getting somewhere these

radio broadcasts

the resistance assassinated him on the

28th of june

and throughout france medician groups

and other supporters of vichy decided to

exact vengeance

the account that finally emerges is that

he rounded up a number of jews

and then he took seven of these and took

them out early in the morning at the end

of june 1944 and lined them up against

the cemetery wall and shot them

[Music]

and left the bodies as examples for

people to see

paul tuffy must have been living there

but left very quickly

there were current photos of him with

his children his wife

this was our treasure

we had a photo

that was important because the most

recent photo we had was from 1973

we questioned the abbot

he said he didn't know anything

i say

you have to respect the french law now

where is paul to be

the mother superior takes matters into

her own hands

mother superior asked the abbot to swear

on the cross that he didn't know

anything

he was trapped

mother superior really shook him up

she made him admit that he knew where

paul duvier was on marriage

he said me to va for two weeks

he's at the saint joseph monastery in

nissan

it's a critical point in the case

but nice is 500 miles south on the

mediterranean coast

there is no time to lose

[Music]

it was 11 pm

due to the fact that my team

was very tired and

more tired

than me

i decided to take the wheel and to drive

myself until until this

nothing could

stop my investigation

french detectives drive through the

night

they're heading for a monastery in nice

[Music]

after more than a year the hunt for war

criminal paul tuvier is entering the end

game

we had to move fast

we hadn't slept since monday

we've been on the go with no rest

we drove at 150 116

i took one photograph with me

and with this photograph now i can put

an image on a guy now to va for me was

very well identified

colonel ricardo calls ahead to

authorities in nice he asks them to

surround the monastery so that no one

can arrive or leave

and i said it was a very important

case

i cannot

spoke about it by phone

but i have in my pocket an arrest

warrant

at dawn we arrived on the outskirts of

nice

there were already six or seven

undercover police officers surrounding

the monastery

so we could enter from the rear and the

front at the same time

but we weren't sure if he was inside

we had our doubts we just didn't know

i knocked at the door

and the priest

opened the door

he was surprised and i suppose a little

bit terrified

the panicked priest tries to keep the

investigators out

i had placed my foot in the door and

violently i opened the door

in the meantime we were in the courtyard

broke down a door and met up with rocco

four of us were inside but there was

only one central staircase

and my investigators rush in the

staircase i grasped the sleeve of the

priest and together we climbed the

staircase

at the top of the stairs there were two

corridors

local don went left with one colleague

and i went right with another

my investigator a few seconds opening on

each side

the door

and i followed taking the priest by the

sleeve

and at this stage

my heart was bumping quickly

and near the end of the corridor

i noticed an investigator stand still in

the frame of the door

and in the middle of the room

i saw

[Music]

after more than four decades on the run

nazi collaborator paul tuvier is

cornered

when i saw this guy standing in the

middle of the room

instantaneously i recognized him as a

pultuvier

paul duvier had a distinctive look

he had piercing blue eyes

i remembered war films with blue eye

nazis

and that shook me up

a few seconds later

a wife

came

followed by her son and her daughter

crying

and tuvi

bruce lee

nasty

ordered them

shut up go back to your rooms

what they did without a worm

and i recognize

the guy

in charge of the intelligent service of

the military when he spoke to the

resistance to the jew

i think it was the same guy

as a bad guy very bad guy

[Music]

as for his children it was sad

they were 35 or 36 years old and they'd

never had a life

they had always lived in a monastery or

abbey

[Music]

because all of the efforts we had put in

together had concluded in a positive

result

it was a clap of thunder

fantastic

for me

i won

i just won my investigation

i don't know how in english

i say sulaje

i was released

after the two vrest i have a thought

concerning the poor people

in the concentration camps

and i thought

now

is the justice time

we had after 40 years finally arrested

paul duvier

there was a flood of journalists

two va faces six counts of crimes

against humanity

he read a statement to me

i dispute having committed crimes

against humanity

i was only doing my job

he had no regrets

the investigation has shown a revealing

light on a dark and secretive corner of

the french catholic church

paul tuvier's arrest also shows that

anti-semitism is alive and kicking in

modern france

within days death to jews is scrawled on

a synagogue in rural

five years after dupier's capture his

trial opens in versailles once home to

france's kings and queens

tensions run high in a nation still

scarred by the war

one of the big moments in the trial is

that during the 80s he kept these

notebooks called the green notebooks

and while he

at his trial denied that he had

maintained the same animosities he'd had

before the war

when the green notebooks are read at his

trial it's clear

that ideologically

this is a man absolutely frozen in the

it became clear that he was very much

the same man who had joined the middle

east and was willing to carry out crimes

to he was a very hateful man

these secret notebooks helped seal 2va's

fate

he is found guilty of crimes against

humanity and sentenced to life in

prison it's an historic verdict

duvier was the first french citizen

to be tried for and found guilty of

crimes against humanity in a french

court and that's really quite

extraordinary there are not many

countries that have prosecuted their own

citizens

for crimes against humanity

i was looking for my mother

all my life

[Music]

paul to

was the man who arrested my mother

and sent my mother to auschwitz

paultovier

has to assume the responsibility

of my life

or my health

[Music]

the end of two years for me was a

classical inquiry

challenging

demanding

and also the right

will

the determination

it was possible to succeed

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

you