A frail young man presented himself at the newspaper’s headquarters on the Rue des Italians in October 1945 with his CV in his pocket.. Théolleyre Jean-Marc. Born on 31 July 1924 in Lyon. Graduate in classics. Joined the Resistance in 1942, southern zone of Toulouse, “action network” of the Organising Committee for parachute drops and landings. Arrested on 29 November 1943. Imprisoned in Bayonne and Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), in Bordeaux, then transferred to the Compiègne camp (Oise). Deported to Buchenwald on 29 January 1944. Released on 11 April 1945. Single. Has an address with a landlord, boulevard du Montparnasse, and a telephone number, LIT. 24-86.
His name was mentioned to the boss, Hubert Beuve-Méry, by a prestigious sponsor, Rémy Roure, who has just joined The world as a political columnist. the former journalist TimeA resistance fighter, a companion of General de Gaulle from the beginning, vouches for this 21-year-old, whom he met during the deportation. Théolleyre is brought to trial. He gets on his bicycle, crosses Paris, breathes the air of these first months of peace and publishes short articles in the newspaper. “It has vibrato”, concludes the boss.
Forty-four years later, on 23 June 1989, the entire legal world of judges, ministers and ex-ministers in capes, including Robert Badinter, famous lawyers and discreet craftsmen, gathered under the stone arches of the restaurant of the Palais de Justice in Paris, on the Île de la Cité, for the reception offered by the newspaper in honour of the retirement of Jean-Marc Théolleyre.
Suddenly, the hubbub ceases, the assembly steps aside and listens. In the centre of the circle, only two remain. With his back hunched and his voice muffled, Beuve faces “Théo”. For almost half an hour he talks, without notes, about his long company. Hubert Beuve-Méry died six weeks later, on 6 August, at the age of 87. The old “boss”, who hardly ever left the house anymore, wanted to make an exception to pay tribute to the former young man who had become the most respected of the court chroniclers.
The beginnings of Badinter, Halimi, Vergès…
To read or reread Théo’s articles is to go through almost half a century of hearings, to travel the country, from north to south and from east to west, and to open the doors of its criminal courts, its State Security Tribunal, its criminal and military courts. To sit in front of the box of Marie Besnard, Pauline Dubuisson, Marguerite Marty, Gaston Dominici, the doctors and guards of the Struthof camp, the authors of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, Raoul Salan, Bastien-Thiry and Klaus Barbie. To go to Algeria, Madagascar and Jerusalem, to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. To hear the demand for capital punishment and to hear the voices of Maurice Garçon, Albert Naud, Henry Torrès, Emile Pollak, René Floriot, Paul Baudet and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour resonate.
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