# VERDUN JOURNAL; Can the Good Petain Be Rescued From the Bad?



## ArcticWolf (Jan 26, 2010)

*VERDUN, France, Feb. 9— *In the gloomy chamber where the town council convenes, Mayor Jacques Barat-Dupont pointed a stubby finger at the slab bearing the names of Verdun's citizens of honor. In freshly carved wooden letters stood a surname that stirs pride and shame in France: ''General Petain, victor of Verdun.'' 

''I did not put 'Marshal,' '' explained the Mayor with an edge of apology in his voice. ''I put 'General' so that there would be no confusion between the hero of Verdun and the Marshal of the occupation.'' 

[...]

There are two places in France that are forever linked to Petain. One is the spa of Vichy, which after the German invasion of 1940 became the improbable capital of France with the grandfatherly Marshal Petain as its puppet head of state. The other is Verdun. 'They Shall Not Pass' 

[...]

The Mayor says he rightfully restored General Petain's name to the wooden tablet from which it had been vindictively effaced in 1945, and he says he will consider removing it again only if two-thirds of Verdun's 35-member council repudiates him.

[...]

''That Petain has his name in a museum is fine, since he belongs to history,'' said Jean-Louis Dumont, a Socialist member of the city council. ''But what is unacceptable is that his name is in a chamber where democracy takes place. There are people who go there with the tattoos of Auschwitz on their arms, and for them it is inadmissible.''

[...]

The Petain project looks rather like the classic solution of a politician in domestic difficulty seeking a distracting foreign adventure. In conversation, the Mayor made it plain that restoring the name of Petain was but a first step in a far bolder project to get the Marshal's remains transferred from the obscurity of the Ile d'Yeu to Verdun's municipal cemetery: a sure-fire tourist attraction. 

[...]

As an icy rain swept over his stone house on the Verdun battlefield, Abbe Pierre Homant, a jolly curator of Falstaffian girth, said he thought it would still be a long time before Petain's remains were transferred here. ''We would collide with history,'' he said. ''There is still too much hatred in some people.'' 

James Lardenois, a ruddy survivor of the 1916 battle, thought this was just as well. ''Petain shook Hitler's hand,'' said Mr. Lardenois, who was wounded in the leg and decorated for bravery. ''He deported people. If ever the Germans had won the war, they would have executed de Gaulle. Oh no, monsieur!'' 

Agitated now, the 93-year-old former warrior exploded: ''For me, it was collaboration with the Germans! If someone commits a crime after an exemplary life he has still committed a crime.'' 

For the full article (2 pages):

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/11/w...ain-be-rescued-from-the-bad.html?pagewanted=1


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