"In the war’s first years Trudeau swam ever more vigorously in nationalist streams, opposing conscription, defending Vichy and Marshall Petain, equating Hitler’s Reich with British policy towards Quebec, and even contemplating and plotting Quebec independence", said John English, a professor at the University of Waterloo in the Department of History and MP for Kitchener from 1993 to 1997.
The first French statute to restrict and punish Jews in October 1940 was made worse by Marshal Petain, the Nazi occupation “puppet” leader. Petain was admired and not criticized by French intellectuals in Quebec, including Pierre Trudeau.
The original plan to protect "descendants of Jews born French or naturalised before 1860" is scribbled over in the handwriting of the fascist sympathizer Petain. Serge Klarsfeld, lawyer and historian, presented proof, when interviewed on French radio.
"The statute on Jews was a statute that was adopted without pressure from the Germans, without the request of the Germans: an indigenous statute. And now we have decisive evidence that it was the desire of Marshal Pétain himself. The main argument of Pétain's defenders was to say that he protected French Jews. This argument has now fallen.”
In October 1940, the first Law on the Status of the Jews defined who was Jewish and removed Jews from civil and military service and from education, media, and cinema professions. Financial robbery on a grand scale followed, “Aryanization,” with the confiscation of Jewish‑owned assets.
By February 1941, French law allowed temporary administrators to sell firms without the permission of the Jewish owners. A further decree in April 1941 agreed upon by both Germans and French denied professional freedom in trade and banking. More restrictions followed in unoccupied parts of France. Pétain, a veteran of the first world war, was tried by Charles de Gaulle's provisional post-war government. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. An alarming number of men liked by the young Pierre Trudeau were tried as traitors at the close of World War II. (more...)
Pierre Trudeau’s Vichy France social circles
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