I LIKED FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND. When I first met him, I was seven years old. It was February 1943, and he had just made the life-changing decision to join the Resistance in Montmaur while my family was there in its brief role as cover for the printing of false papers. Years later, when I heard his speeches on the radio, I was impressed by his talents as an orator, his ability to cause controversy, and his sense of humor. We campaigned for his election as president in 1974 (when he lost) but not in 1981 (when he won) because he had been the only candidate not to rule out the transfer of Marshal Pétain’s body to the Douaumont Ossuary, a symbolic act that would have signified the rehabilitation of the man who led the Vichy regime in its collaboration with the Nazis.
For Mitterrand, Vichy had been the starting point to a brilliant career. His family had idolized Marshal Pétain, and Mitterrand never lost his respect for the man.
And yet I was happy when Mitterrand was elected in 1981. Pragmatic as ever, he did not keep his promise to transfer Pétain’s body, and he helped with the expulsion of Barbie from La Paz to Lyon. He also awarded Beate and myself the order of the Legion of Honor in 1984.
But every year from 1987 onward, on November 11—the day when France commemorates its war dead—President Mitterrand would place a wreath on Pétain’s grave, and that disgusted me. For our association of Sons and Daughters, it was too much.
We had to pick our battles, however, and this was one we seemed almost certain to lose. So it was not until October 1990 that I finally decided I had to publicly oppose Mitterrand. It was clear by then that he was protecting Maurice Papon. But when René Bousquet’s dossier, too, was effectively blocked, I decided to publish an article about Mitterrand’s past, which—prior to his decision to join the Resistance—had included a spell working for the Vichy government.
The media reacted very discreetly to these revelations at the time, and it was only when Pierre Péan’s book about the president’s wartime years appeared in 1994 that people finally admitted I had been right four years earlier.
My most overt act of war against Mitterrand came in 1992, when I decided the time had come to shine a light on what I regarded as the “enormous scandal” of his annual wreath-laying on Marshal Pétain’s grave. So Arno and I together came up with a plan. The solution, we decided, was to invent a believable lie that would trap Mitterrand in a no-win situation, similar to the one Beate and I had invented in the Continental Grain affair, back in 1971: I would publicly declare that someone close to the president had passed on a message to me from Mitterrand himself stating that he would no longer lay a wreath on Pétain’s grave. If he then went ahead with the wreath-laying, it would be news—because he would have gone against what the media and public opinion expected of him. And so, on July 21, “with satisfaction,” I made the announcement.
The journalist Georges-Marc Benamou was present when the president heard this news, and he wrote about it in a book entitled Young Man, You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About:
The Agence France-Presse had just reported the president’s announcement that he would no longer lay the wreath for Pétain. I was delighted. But Mitterrand immediately made clear that the announcement was false, a lie completely invented by Serge Klarsfeld: “He’s unbelievable, that Klarsfeld. He has some nerve. He must be a madman.” His eyes lit up. “A madman … or a manipulator.”
He paused, then began to think out loud: “That Klarsfeld, with whom I used to be on good terms, he’s decided to lead me where he wants me to go. He has a plan, and he’s willing to do anything to achieve it, even this kind of barefaced lie. I hadn’t made any kind of decision about that wreath. And if I did have anything to announce, I would hardly have told him, this man who is openly at war with me…”
I saw a grimace of displeasure on his face. He was exasperated at the situation he had found himself in and was desperately seeking a way out of it. He had been trapped by Serge Klarsfeld’s cunning trick.
On November 11, I went to the Île d’Yeu, where Pétain is buried, with three friends and a group of Jewish student activists. Unlike most of the rest of the French population, it seemed obvious to us that Mitterrand would lay a wreath on Pétain’s grave—because he had not announced that he wouldn’t.
We had to take a boat to the Île d’Yeu, and there was a terrible storm that made everyone on board—supporters of Pétain and protesters alike—violently seasick. There was only one boat back, and if we didn’t take it, we would be stuck on the island, so we felt we had no choice. As the storm continued to rage, and as the boat took us away from Pétain’s grave, we saw a helicopter descend on the island and the prefect of the Vendée place François Mitterrand’s wreath next to the one left by the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
We organized a protest outside the Vélodrome d’Hiver, and I ordered a special wreath from the best florist in Paris: a very large bouquet in the shape of a francisque—the Vichy medal which Mitterrand received in 1943—and bearing the words “To François Mitterrand, with all my gratitude, from Philippe Pétain.” It was insolent, but to the point. When the protest ended, three of our female activists went to the president’s palace to present him with this wreath. Police intercepted them before they could get near the building and confiscated the controversial flower arrangement.
Mitterrand never laid another wreath on Pétain’s grave.