NEWS TIFFANY & CO. Mitterrand Hiding Vichy Past, Says Klarsfeld Paloma Picasso's Love and Kisses Paloma Picasso's exclusive pin and earring designs in eighteen karat gold. JULES R. SCHUBOT gemologists jewellers °'4'C AN GEM S 3001 West Big Beaver Road • Suite 112 • Troy, Michigan 48084 • (313) 649-1122 DYSAUTONOMIA NIBBLES & NUTS LOVE is . . . Remembering that SPECIAL SOMEONE On Valentine's Day February 14th. Dysautonomia is organized and operated for educational research purposes to maintain evaluation and treatment of afflected children. 737-8088 33020 NORTHWESTERN MastCardl Outside Of Michigan 1400752-2133 Special Candy & Sugarfree Available 24 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1991 j VISA 1111.1.. Local & Nationwide Delivery Dysautonomia Foundation Inc. 3000 Town Center, Suite 1500, Southfield, MI 48075 (313) 444-4848 Paris (JTA) — Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld has accused President Francois Mitter- rand of protecting a former Vichy official in order to conceal his own service to the Vichy regime. The stunning charge was made in an interview in Ac- tualite Juive, a Jewish week- ly which quoted Mr. Klarsfeld as saying the pres- ident "wants to avoid a close study of his own activities in Vichy, where he started his political career," and was therefore protecting Rene Bousquet, former head of the Vichy government's police. Mr. Bousquet, 81, has been ordered to stand trial for crimes against humanity based on evidence unearthed by Mr. Klarsfeld and his as- sociates. The Paris lawyer who helped track down Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is the first prominent French Jew to question Mr. Mitterrand's wartime past. Mr. Mitter- rand, a Socialist, joined the French Resistance in 1942, as Mr. Klarsfeld acknowl- edged in the interview. But before that, he worked for the Veterans Administra- tion run by the Vichy regime, Mr. Klarsfeld said. According to Mr. Klarsfeld, Mr. Mitterrand is deliberately protecting Mr. Bousquet to prevent "too close scrutiny" of the Vichy administration, its officials and policies. The Vichy government, headed by Marshall Henri Petain, who was prime min- ister, collaborated fully with the Nazis. It was the Vichy police, in fact, which round- ed up tens of thousands of French and foreign Jews for deportation to death camps. Jewish leaders refused to react officially to Mr. Klarsfeld's charge. But pri- vately they said they were deeply disturbed and feared that "this sort of talk" could drive a wedge between the Jewish community and the president. Mr. Mitterrand has a longstanding reputation of friendship with the Jewish community. But earlier this year, he publicly condemned "irresponsible elements" in the Jewish community who accused him of being an ac- complice of Palestine Lib- eration Organization leader Yassir Arafat during Arafat's visit to France. Mr. Bousquet was tried by a special tribunal in 1949 for collaboration with the enemy and was given a sym- bolic sentence which was promptly suspended. Subsequently, he enjoyed a long remunerative career as a banker and headed several large corporations until he retired five years ago, when Mr. Klarsfeld brought new charges against him. Mr. Klarsfeld and an organization of children of Jewish deportees have pro- duced new documentary evidence that Mr. Bousquet ordered the Vichy police to arrest Jews. The prosecution originally asked for trial by a special tribunal which has been long dormant and could take years to reconstitute. But the Court of Appeals, France's second-highest jurisdiction, rejected that request last month and or- dered Mr. Bousquet tried by a regular criminal court. HIAS Activities Scale Down New York (JTA) — A year- old change in U.S. immigra- tion policies for Soviet ap- plicants has changed the operations of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the migration agency of the American Jewish commu- nity. The New York-based organization, which coor- dinated the immigration of Soviet Jews via Vienna and Rome for the last two decades, has scaled down its activities in Europe and in- itiated contact with poten- tial emigrants within the Soviet Union. For the first time, a pair of BIAS representatives twice traveled to the Soviet Union last year for two-week rounds of meetings with ( Soviet Jewish community leaders. A similar mission is planned this month. "We want to bring a little clarity to lives that are filled with uncertainty," says Deborah Mark, special assis- tant to the executive vice president of HIAS. "The Russian Jews are begging us for information." "There is a feeling 'We can't stay here,' " said Mer- rill Rosenberg, director of the BIAS Italian office, re- ferring to the growing threat of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and the breakdown of the country's economy.