David Rousset

Who was David Rousset?

David Rousset was a French writer and political activist, a recipient of Prix Renaudot, a French literary award. Survivor of the Neuengamme concentration camp and the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp, he is famous for his books about concentration camps.

He was the first person to use the term "Gulag" in French language, revealing to French the Soviet system of labor camps. In 1949, learning that the concentration camps destroyed in Nazi Germany still existed in the Soviet Union, he appealed to former inmates of Nazi 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 the French communist newspaper French Letters, which accused him of slander of the Soviet Union, forging the texts of the Soviet laws, and misinformation. Rousset brought charges against the newspaper, and in 1951 he won the case.