Jacques Cartonnet

Biographical information

RolesCompeted in Olympic Games
SexMale
Full nameJacques Ulysse Joseph•Cartonnet
Used nameJacques•Cartonnet
Born13 October 1911 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pas-de-Calais (FRA)
Died1967 in ? (ITA)
Measurements168 cm
AffiliationsSCUF, Paris (FRA)
NOC France

Biography

Jacques Cartonnet was a breaststroke swimmer who competed at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Cartonnet was French Champion in the 200 metres breaststroke six times (1931-32, 1935-37, 1939), and twice set world records for the 200 breaststroke, one in 1933 (2:42.6) and the second in 1935 (2:39.6).

Cartonnet was a pilot at the Montauban Aviation School in 1939-40. He joined the Vichy militia in April 1943 and re-located to Vichy in October 1943, when he was appointed head of the Youth and Sports Department of the Militia, dependent on the General Secretariat.

Cartonnet worked as a propagandist, expressing a virulent anti-Semitism explaining why he was impugned, rightly or wrongly, in the November 1943 arrest and deportation of his former sports rival Alfred Nakache (46900), aka the “ Swimmer of Auschwitz”. Cartonnet moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine in April 1944, but still held the same government positions. At the liberation of France he fled the country for Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

On 19 March 1945 Cartonnet was sentenced to death in absentia by the Court of Justice of Haute-Garonne and was arrested by French authorities in Italy in 1946. He escaped by jumping from the military plane transporting him from Roma to Paris in April 1946 but was then arrested by Italian police in Foligno in November 1947. Imprisoned in Rome, he was interned in the Fraschette camp for undesirable foreigners in February 1948. Details are unclear but Cartonnet seemingly escaped again and hid in a monastery in Italy, dying there in 1967.

Results

Games Discipline (Sport) / Event NOC / Team Pos Medal As
1932 Summer Olympics Swimming (Aquatics) FRA Jacques Cartonnet
200 metres Breaststroke, Men (Olympic) 4 h1 r2/3

Special Notes