David Rousset (1912–1997)

David Rousset was born in Roanne, France, the son of a metalworker. He became a journalist and contributed to numerous publications, including Time and Fortune magazines. He was involved in socialist politics during the 1930s, and after Nazi Germany's invasion of France in World War II, he joined the French Resistance. He founded and edited a clandestine resistance newspaper. In 1943, he was captured by the Gestapo and sent to four different concentration camps, including Neuengamme and Buchenwald. He survived the war to be liberated by the U.S. Army in April 1945. He began writing books about concentration camps, starting with his memoir L'Univers concentrationnaire (published in English as A World Apart/The Other Kingdom), written during his recovery, which received the Prix Renaudot in 1946. Rousset became the first person to use the term "gulag" in the French language, revealing to the French people the existence of the system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. In 1949, he was one of the founders of the International Committee Against Concentration Camps. For these efforts, he was reviled by French Communists and many fellow travellers. The party newspaper Les Lettres françaises accused him of slander and forgery; Rousset brought charges against the paper, and in 1951 he won the case. Along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Gerard Rosenthal, Rousset was a founder of the short-lived political party Rassemblement démocratique révolutionnaire. In 1968, he was elected to the French National Assembly as a left-wing Gaullist deputy for the Isere (Vienne). He resigned in 1970. Other published works included the concentration camp novel Les Jours de notre mort (The Days of Our Death, 1947); Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution: A Critical History of the USSR, Volume 1 (1982); and The Crisis in the Soviet System (1986).