A movement under way in this country for some time to “rehabilitate” the late Marshal Philippe Petain, and reinter his remains in the French national military cemetery at Verdun, received its first setback today with a blast against Petain’s anti-Semitism and Nazi collaboration in the organ of the Movement Against Racial Anti-Semitism and for Peace.
The influential organ, Justice and Liberty, carried an open letter to Francois Mauriac from the famous, non-Jewish poet, Vercors, the unofficial “poet laureate” of the resistance movement, complaining against the planned honors for Petain.
The periodical itself pointed out that, under Petain’s regime at Vichy, during World War II, he cooperated with the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazis, delivering to the Germans many German Jewish refugees and, finally, deporting the French Jewish community to Auschwitz ad Bergen Belsen. Justice and Liberty recalled that hundreds of thousands of Jews died in Nazi camps as a result of Petain’s collaboration.
It was believed here today that the attack against honoring Petain, delivered by Vercorn, may start a dynamic movement to curb the plans to “rehabilitate” the marshal.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
