Word: petain
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...Life: Married to Denise-Henriette Bloch. His only son Antoine, a parachutist, was killed in World War II; a daughter Lise is married to a silk dealer. Political Career: Headed French armament mission to London 1939. Returning to France after the 1940 collapse, he was denied all posts under Petain's anti-Semitic laws; escaped to North Africa in 1943, where he joined the Free French in Algiers. After the liberation of Paris, De Gaulle made him Public Works and Transportation Minister; later, French Commissioner for German Affairs. In 1947 he represented France at the U.N. As Finance Minister...
...Department (1934), to the Chamber of Deputies (1936) and to a seat in the French Senate (1938). For a short while, right after the war, he was out of office-kicked out by the newly dominant Resistance because he was one of 225 Senators who voted state powers to Petain in 1940. Pinay had not joined the Resistance; it offended his conservative sense of law & order. But villagers have since related that as mayor during the occupation, he hid Jews and issued false papers to Frenchmen hunted by the Gestapo. Shortly he was back in the Assembly, and within...
During the war, Perroy continued his work at the Sorbonne, while doing "odd jobs" for the underground on the side. When the Petain government tried to press French students into forced labor in Germany, Perroy helped spirit them off to the Maquis. His success prompted the Germans into an investigation and Perroy had to "disappear" to Lyons, where he took over direction of all underground activities in that district...
Last week, in Paris, a greying cavalry officer, the Marquis Andre de Belleval, fleetingly rustled the tatters of the once great legend of Petain. He and some 500 other sympathizers of the old man attended a public auction of Petain's books and household effects (no ribbons, no medals), which the government had confiscated after his trial in 1945. At first there was icy silence. Then the Marquis mounted a chair and, waving his cane, he demanded that the sale end at once...
Amid shouts of "Vive Petain/" from the audience, Belleval denounced the proceedings as a "dishonor to France," proposed a token bid of one franc for each item on sale, so that the objects might be returned to Petain. The offer was turned down. The indignant audience burst into the Marseillaise. Fifty policemen finally cleared the hall. Once more the Marshal's belongings would gather dust. The old man would scarcely have found use for them, anyway...