The chagrin and the belated pity
A French general’s memoirs are making France think harder about its past
THE interview last week in Le Monde could have been the sadistic reflections of any dictatorship's faithful servant: “It's efficient, torture. Most people crack and talk. Then you usually finish them off. Did that trouble my conscience? I have to say no.” But the torturer in question is not some minor thug from Augusto Pinochet's Chile or the shah's Iran; instead, he is General Paul Aussaresses, a bemedalled, eye-patched hero of the French army, launching at the age of 83 his unexpurgated memoirs as a member of the Special Forces from 1955 to 1957 during Algeria's war of independence.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The chagrin and the belated pity”
From the May 12th 2001 edition
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