Intellectuals Sign Statement Deploring Wreath for Petain

A number of French intellectuals have signed a statement deploring French President Francois Mitterrand’s decision earlier this month to have a wreath placed on the grave of a leader of Vichy France.

They said the president should not have honored Marshal Philippe Petain, who “betrayed the confidence the French in 1940 placed in the victor of Verdun.”

Mitterrand himself has apparently had second thoughts about including Petain among the World War I generals honored with memorial wreaths on Nov. 11, the 74th anniversary of the armistice ending World War I.

In an interview with a Paris Jewish radio station broadcast Sunday, Mitterrand said that in the future he would have to “deal differently” with the discrepancy between the hero of World War I and the Vichy leader and “shame of World War II.”

Mitterrand’s remarks were taped Nov. 12 as he prepared for his state visit to Israel later in the month.

The statement by the French intellectuals said Petain had “chosen a policy of collaboration that fulfilled the wishes of the (Third) Reich, and was an accomplice or directly responsible for the deportation of Jewish and Gypsy men, women and children.”

Petain’s history should convince the president of the republic “to pay not the slightest homage” to him in the future, they said.

In his interview, Mitterrand said he was ready to make a “significant gesture” in an effort to dissipate the impression left by the incident. He did not specify.

Mitterrand’s gesture had been vigorously protested by Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld and about 40 members of the Union of French Jewish Students.

At the time of the wreath-laying, Klarsfeld said, “We cannot understand how the president, who came this summer to pay his respects to the memory of those who were arrested and deported, can also lay a wreath on the tomb of their persecutor.”

He spoke on the tiny Atlantic island of Yeu, a few miles off the French coast, where Petain is buried.

Mitterrand insisted in the radio interview that present-day France could not be held responsible for the crimes of the Vichy regime toward the Jews.

That view was contradicted by a leader of his own Socialist Party.

Henri Emmanuelli, president of the National Assembly, said France should take as its model the actions of the late German leader, Willy Brandt.

“I note that Germany didn’t say the Third Reich had nothing to do with the German Federal Republic. Willy Brandt asked for forgiveness. I think France should also ask for forgiveness, and settle this issue once and forever,” he said.