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New York Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
A Cutting French Senator Becomes Trump's European Nemesis
At a recent ceremony in Vichy, France, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, a small, dapper man stepped forward from the crowd to place a wreath at the foot of a monument to the dead. He listened to students speak of endangered peace, the defense of French values and the fascist scourge that led to Hitler's gas chambers. The seemingly unremarkable face in the crowd was Senator Claude Malhuret, who has become President Trump's European nemesis. His barbed speeches, viewed tens of millions of times, have cast the president as an 'incendiary emperor' and suggested that 'never before has anyone so trampled on the Constitution.' With a scathing directness little heard from politicians in the United States and prompted by what he sees as a presidential assault on America's essential checks and balances, Mr. Malhuret has compared Mr. Trump to two tyrannical Roman emperors, Nero and Caligula. But he has added that, if Caligula named his horse a consul, 'at least that horse did no harm to anyone.' The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the senator's onslaught. Mr. Malhuret, 75, a retired physician and a right-leaning centrist, was the mayor of Vichy for 28 years until 2017. The town in central France is a symbol of the country's wartime ignominy. From 1940 to 1944, it was the capital of Marshal Philippe Pétain's regime, which collaborated with Nazi Germany to send some 76,000 Jews to their deaths in Hitler's camps. So it was natural to ask him if Vichy's past inspired his fierce stand against what he sees as an American tilt toward tyranny. 'You know people still come here and expect to see men with little Hitler mustaches,' Mr. Malhuret said. 'The so-called regime of Vichy should be called the regime of the French State or of Pétain. By the time I took office here, I was already a visceral antitotalitarian, whether of the right or left.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
France 24
07-05-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Resistance: When France's clergy saved Jews during WWII
In the spring of 1940, the French army was defeated by the Wehrmacht, and Marshal Pétain agreed to collaborate with the occupying forces. Among the measures taken by his Vichy-based government was the "status of Jews", on October 18. The law excluded Jews from public life and many foreign Jewish refugees were also rounded up in internment camps. As early as the summer of 1940, some French people were compelled to commit to a moral and spiritual Resistance. This was the case of Pastor Roland de Pury in Lyon, who declared from the pulpit on July 14: " France would be better off dead than to sell itself." His words echo the sentiments of Bruno de Solages, rector of the Institut Catholique in Toulouse, who took in refugees from all over Europe, issuing them with student cards to enable them to obtain false papers and go underground. Yet the real turning point came in the summer of 1942, when the large roundups began. Volunteers working in the internment camps near Toulouse alerted the archbishop to the mistreatment of the Jewish people, as they were directed on foot into cattle cars. Monseigneur Saliège wrote a letter, which he sent to be read aloud in every church in his diocese, denouncing the deportations and appealing to Christian morality. In Lyon, on the night of August 28-29, 1942, the Amitié Chrétienne association organised the largest rescue of Jewish children in France, thanks to the protection of Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon. Cardinal Gerlier, who had supported Marshal Pétain in 1940, refused to hand over the children to the Prefect of Lyon, who was directing the deportations. Spiritual power in defiance of the powers that be: the Lyon Resistance amplified this act, making it a pivotal event. Cardinals Saliège and Gerlier were not targeted by the authorities because of their age and rank in the Church, but many men and women of the cloth were arrested for their moral Resistance. Roland de Pury spent more than five months incarcerated at Fort Montluc in Lyon. Others, such as Solages and three priests from the Institut Catholique in Toulouse, were sent to camps in Germany. They wrote first-hand accounts of their deportation in a collective publication entitled "Pèlerins de bagne" or "Pilgrims of the penal colony". Many of their fellow prisoners never returned.
