'Evidence' of Petain's persecution of Jews found

The document was given a few days ago to France’s Holocaust Memorial museum by a donor who wanted to remain anonymous, Serge Klarsfeld said.

Mr Klarsfeld, a lawyer and long-time Nazi hunter, said he was certain the document was authentic and called it the latest sign of official anti-Semitism by the French – and not just by their German occupiers.

The document, dated October 3 1940, is a draft of a statute on Jews under France’s collaborationist Vichy regime. It includes what Mr Klarsfeld says are handwritten notes by Vichy leader Philippe Petain describing how authorities should target Jews, notably by excluding them from public office and from working in schools.

Mr Klarsfeld said the document was “decisive proof” that the measures were taken at the behest of Petain himself and that the handwritten notes showed that Petain in fact toughened the statute’s original language.

Mr Klarsfeld said the statute was not written “at the Germans’ demands” and shows “the will of Vichy to align itself with the Nazi racial ideology”.

France has struggled to come to terms with its role in the Holocaust. Around 76,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps and fewer than 3,000 returned alive.

It was not until 1995 that then-president Jacques Chirac said the nation bore some responsibility, breaking with the official position that the Vichy regime was not synonymous with the French state.

Petain’s defenders have said he acted to protect Jews, to the degree he could, under the Nazi occupation.

Historians have had only indirect evidence of Petain’s involvement in drafting the statute on Jews, from a declaration by a former foreign minister who said Petain ordered the toughest anti-Semitic measures of all.

“At his depths, he was an anti-Semite, and did not defend French Jews... He took the initiative to persecute them,” Mr Klarsfeld said.

The document appears to show that Petain crossed out an exemption in the original statute for French Jews whose ancestors were naturalised before 1860 and edited it to ensure that Jews could not run for public office.

All the changes suggested by the notes were included in the final, published version of the statute. Mr Klarsfeld, whose father died in Auschwitz, has devoted his life to shedding light on France’s collaboration in the Holocaust.