Petain Balked on Anti-semitic Law, Refugee Poet Says

Marshal Petain five times declined to sign the French anti-Jewish statute of last October, but eventually capitulated under Nazi pressure, Andre Spire, the French Jewish poet, who arrived here several weeks ago, said in an interview today. French leaders say quite frankly that the people of France, entirely out of sympathy with these measures, will force their repeal as soon as the country is liberated from the Germans, according to Spire.

Further information on the reaction of the French to the anti-Jewish legislation is given by Thomas Kernan, an American magazine publisher who lived in France, in an article in the current Saturday Evening Post.

“There seems to be no doubt that Vichy was forced to issue the decrees or suffer ever more punitive measures against the French people.” the article says. “It is probable that Pierre Leval bargained for the release of around 200,000 French prisoners–needed doctors, nurses and the fathers or four children or more–in return for the anti-Jewish decrees.”

Last September, the article says, a group of French youths in Paris demonstrated against Jews, breaking shop windows. The reaction “was one of disgust and sympathy, and it was for carefully if quietly manifested. The following days, behind boarded-up windows, Toutmain and Annabel (Jewish-owned shops) were filled with more customers than these shops had served in many months, customers they had never had before.”

The youths, member of the Front Jeune, never again appeared in the role of storm troopers. “They dropped into the discard. The anti-Jewish campaign, which the Nazis were determined to carry out regardless, shifted to the more subtle and lethal policy of census and expropriation.