Patrick Chaimovitch appears for his speech on the commemoration of the Vel d’Hiv – ISA HARSIN / SIPA
- On July 19, the mayor of Colombes compared in a speech, the Vichy police officers involved in the Vel d’Hiv ’roundup to those of today who “track migrants”.
- After having assumed them for a while, Patrick Chaimovitch regretted the confusion created by his words.
- The city councilor incurs a fine of 12,000 euros.
He himself recognized a “clumsiness” and “regretted that [son] This could have caused confusion ”. An apology that will not prevent Patrick Chaimovitch, the ecological mayor of Colombes, in the Hauts-de-Seine, from appearing Tuesday afternoon before the 14th chamber of the Nanterre criminal court for “public insult to a body constituted, an official , a depositary of authority or a citizen in charge of a public service by speech ”. The trial which was to be held in December had been postponed due to the city council’s agenda. “He should be present despite a very busy schedule,” we say this time within his cabinet.
Return July 19. On this day, the newly elected mayor commemorates the 78th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup, in which 13,000 Jews were arrested at their homes by French police and gendarmes and then handed over to Nazi Germany. It was during this speech, which was relatively civilized and moreover classic, that Patrick Chaimovitch compared the police to the Vichy police. “The French police officers, the French gendarmes who obeyed the orders of their superiors by implementing the Vel d’Hiv roundup […] are the ancestors of those who today, with the same zeal, track down migrants, undocumented migrants, those rejected by human rights, these living beings who try to survive in poverty. “
An outcry on the left as well as on the right
Quickly going viral on social networks, the sequence provoked outrage, both on the left and on the right. “Insane and scandalous comparison”, according to Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region, “an amalgamation and a double fault” in the eyes of the head of the PS, Olivier Faure who specifies that “the police do not return migrants to gas chambers but in their country of origin ”. The day after his speech, the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, announced that he had lodged a complaint against Patrick Chaimovitch, who faces a fine of up to 12,000 euros.
The latter, after reiterating his comments on Twitter, assuming “to make the link” between these deportations during the Second World War and “the migrants chased everywhere in Europe because they are different” finally backtracked and recalled his support for security forces who “exercise the heavy republican responsibility for security in extremely difficult conditions”. He will have to explain this Tuesday.