Petain’s role in the Holocaust exposed
Attempts to whitewash the role played in the Holocaust by Marshal Petain were discredited this week with the discovery of a document that shows he helped the Third Reich enforce its anti-Semitic policies.
ATTEMPTS to whitewash the role played in the Holocaust by the leader of France’s collaborationist government were discredited this week with the discovery of a document that shows he actively helped the Third Reich enforce its anti-Semitic policies.
After World War II, Marshal Philippe Petain, head of the puppet Vichy regime, claimed he had tried to protect French Jews from the excesses of Nazism and prevent their deportation to the concentration camps.
However, 70 years after the enactment of the Statute of Jews in October 1940, which deprived the Jewish population of their rights, a draft of the law was left anonymously at the Memorial of the Shoah museum in Paris.
The document includes notes which, according to experts, are in Petain’s handwriting and which exacerbate rather than ameliorate the level of anti-Semitic discrimination.
As well as extending the types of jobs that Jews would be barred from holding to include legal and teaching positions, the marshal’s amendments also widened the section of the Jewish population who would face internment.
The original draft excluded¬† “descendants of Jews born in France or naturalised before 1860”, but that was crossed out by Petain.
The document was authenticated by lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, who heads an organisation for the memorial of children of deported French Jews.
“We now have the proof that he [Petain] intervened to extend the range of bans and to restrain the possibilities of exemption,” Klarsfeld told France’s Le Monde newspaper.
“It is a confirmation of Petain’s anti-Semitism because he did not try, contrary to what some claim, to save the Jews, and finally because he did not hesitate to align himself with Nazi racial ideology.
ZEDDY LAWRENCE
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