David Rousset (18 January 1912 in

Roanne Roanne (; ; ) is a commune in the Loire department, central France. It is located northwest of Lyon on the river Loire. It has an important Museum, the ''Musée des Beaux-arts et d'Archéologie Joseph-Déchelette'' (French), with many Egypt ...

Loire The Loire ( , , ; ; ; ; ) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône. It rises in the so ...

– 13 December 1997) was a French writer and political activist, a recipient of

Prix Renaudot The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or () is a French literary award. History The prize was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt. While not officially related to the Prix Goncour ...

, a French literary award. A survivor of the

Neuengamme concentration camp Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and List of subcamps of Neuengamme, more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme, Hamburg, N ...

and the

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...

Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

, he is famous for his books about

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

s.Jean-Paul Monferran
"David Rousset: mort d'un grand témoin" (obituary)
''

L'Humanité (; ) is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organisation of the SFIO, ''de facto'', and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, would not exist." History ...

'', 15 December 1997. Rousset was the first person to use the term "

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

" in the French language, revealing to the French the Soviet system of

labour camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see British and American spelling differences, spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are unfree labour, forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have ...

s. In 1949, learning that while the concentration camps in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

had been destroyed, camps still existed in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, he appealed to former inmates of Nazi German 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 Pierre Daix in the French communist newspaper ''

Les Lettres Françaises ''Les Lettres Françaises'' ( French for "The French Letters") is a French literary publication, founded in 1941 by writers Jacques Decour and Jean Paulhan. Originally a clandestine magazine of the French Resistance in German-occupied territo ...

'', which accused him of slandering the Soviet Union, forging the texts of the Soviet laws, and spreading misinformation. Rousset brought libel charges against the newspaper, and in 1951 he won the case. Along with

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...

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. In 1968 he was elected as a deputy to the

French National Assembly The National Assembly (, ) is the lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral French Parliament under the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (France), Senate (). The National Assembly's legislators are known ...

as a left-wing

Gaullist Gaullism ( ) is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle withdrew French forces from t ...

. He resigned in November 1970.

Bibliography

* ''The Other Kingdom'' (Reynal & Hitchcock Inc., 1947) * from '' L'Univers concentrationnaire'' (French)
"The Drama of Political Confrontation"
''Telos'' 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press. * ''Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution: A Critical History of the USSR, Volume 1'' (translated by Alan Freeman; London: Allison & Busby, 1982) * ''The Crisis in the Soviet System'' (1986) * Bibliography of the Holocaust § Early Reports

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rousset, David 1912 births 1997 deaths People from Roanne French Section of the Workers' International politicians Internationalist Workers Party politicians Internationalist Communist Party (France) politicians Revolutionary Democratic Rally politicians Union of Democrats for the Republic politicians Deputies of the 4th National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic Members of Parliament for Isère French male writers Writers from Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes 20th-century French male writers Gulag Buchenwald concentration camp survivors Neuengamme concentration camp survivors French people of the Algerian War Prix Renaudot winners