David Rousset

David Rousset (1912–1997) was a French writer, political activist, and former Nazi concentration camp survivor. He is best known for his work documenting and analyzing the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, particularly through his seminal work L'Univers concentrationnaire (1946), which brought attention to the brutality of life in the camps. Having been imprisoned in the Buchenwald and Neuengamme concentration camps during World War II due to his activities with the French Resistance, Rousset used his personal experiences to shed light on the mechanisms of totalitarian regimes.

Rousset's post-war activism focused on defending human rights and exposing totalitarian abuses, especially in the Soviet Union. In 1949, he famously challenged former prisoners to join him in investigating Soviet labor camps, arguing that such systems were not exclusive to Nazi Germany. His efforts to expose the atrocities committed by Stalinist regimes were influential, helping to shape post-war intellectual debates about totalitarianism.

He was sued for libel by Communists in France, after Rousset accused the Soviet system of using slavery, forced labor, mass systems of imprisonment, totalitarianism, as features of state policy. He was accused of falsifying Soviet documents in leftist magazines in France, where Rousset responded by filing a defamation claim, where he prevailed.

Rousset is generally acknowledged as the first to use the phrase "Gulag" to describe the Soviet concentration camp system.

Later in his career, Rousset continued to advocate for historical truth, publishing extensively on concentration camps and engaging in anti-totalitarian movements. He remained a significant figure in French intellectual life, deeply committed to human rights and the remembrance of historical atrocities.

In 1968 he was elected deputy to the French National Assembly as a left-wing Gaullist. He resigned in November 1970.