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David Rousset (18 January 1912 in Roanne, Loire – 13 December 1997) was a French writer and political activist, a recipient of Prix Renaudot, a French literary award. A survivor of the Neuengamme concentration camp and the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp, he is famous for his books about concentration camps.

Rousset was the first person to use the term "Gulag" in the French language, revealing to the French the Soviet system of labour camps. In 1949, learning that while the concentration camps in Nazi Germany had been destroyed, camps 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 Pierre Daix in the French communist newspaper Les Lettres Françaises, 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, Albert Camus 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 as a left-wing Gaullist. He resigned in November 1970.

Bibliography

• The Other Kingdom (Reynal & Hitchcock Inc., 1947)
• Rousset, David (1951) . A World Apart. Translated by Moyse, Yvonne; Senhouse, Roger. London: Secker and Warburg. 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

1. ^ Jean-Paul Monferran, "David Rousset: mort d'un grand témoin" (obituary), L'Humanité, 15 December 1997.
2. "Pierre Daix Matricule 59 807 à Mauthausen: Pourquoi David Rousset a-t-il inventé les camps soviétiques", Les Lettres Françaises, November 1949.
3. Wittner, Lawrence S. (1993–2003). The Struggle Against The Bomb. Vol. 1. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 115. ISBN 0-80472-141-6.
4. "David Rousset". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 20 March 2022.

• 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