Saturday’s tribute to Marshal Pétain at a church in Verdun was an “insult to the memory” of the deportees, Crif president Yonathan Arfi assessed X, criticizing the “apology for collaboration”.
“On August 15, 1945, Philippe Pétain was tried guilty of intelligence with the enemy, of high treason, and of national humiliation: to pay tribute to him today en masse would be to betray the Republic,” wrote the president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions.
“The indecent tribute to the man responsible for the anti-Semitic criminal law is an insult to the memory of the 76,000 Jews deported from France, who were handed over by collaborators of the Vichy regime to the Nazis,” he judged. “Celebrating mass for Pétain means advocating for collaboration and rehabilitating traitors to the country,” continued Yonathan Arfi.
Crif warned against Pétain’s rehabilitation.
On 15 August 1945, Philippe Pétain was tried guilty of intelligence with the enemy, of high treason, and of national humiliation: to pay tribute to him today en masse would be to betray the Republic.
This… pic.twitter.com/BDL4AF0uQV
— Yonathan Arfi (@Yonathan_Arfi) November 15, 2025
This tribute attracted about twenty people to the church of Saint Jean-Baptiste in front of about a hundred demonstrators, and was authorized by an administrative court despite the mayor’s wishes to ban it.
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The Prefect of Meuse announced that he would report to the court the revisionist statements made on the sidelines of the honors.
The statement was made today on the sidelines of mass as a “tribute” to Philippe Pétain in #Verdun goes against our collective memory.
In support of the Mayor of Verdun, I strongly condemn any attempt to rehabilitate a figure associated with collaboration and oppression.… https://t.co/eBJAH5L1yn
— Laurent Nuñez (@NunezLaurent) November 15, 2025
“The statement delivered today during the Mass tribute to Philippe Pétain at Verdun goes against our collective memory. In support of the Mayor of Verdun, I strongly condemn any attempt to rehabilitate a figure associated with collaboration and oppression. The Prefect of Meuse will take up article 40”, stressed Minister Laurent Nuñez.
At the end of the religious service, the president of the Association for the Defense of Marshal Pétain’s Memorial (ADMP), Jacques Boncompain, emphasized in front of journalists that the leader of the Vichy regime, sentenced to death in 1945, was “France’s first resistance fighter”.
