With the sun bathing its elegant gardens, the great spa town of central France is a picture of autumn beauty. Less visible is the enduring blight from which it suffers: the name of Vichy.

Now, 64 years since it was home to the pro-Nazi regime of Marshal Pétain, Vichy is hoping to soften the infamy that has long tainted the name of one of the most fashionable resorts of prewar Europe.

President Sarkozy's Government and the local MP are seeking to lay to rest the ghosts that haunt the town which became shorthand for collaboration and war crime. Both have, however, triggered their own controversy.

Vichy, on the Allier river, is to host ministers from the 27 EU states on Monday as they seek to harmonise immigration policy. They are to meet in the same Second Empire building where the parliament of defeated France abolished the Republic in July 1940 and handed power to the ageing Pétain.

At the same time, Gérard Charasse, 64, its centre-left MP, is to table a Bill in parliament to outlaw the use by officials of the word Vichy as a synonym for the regime that betrayed France and deported thousands of Jews to their deaths.

“Saying ‘Vichy' to mean the dictatorship of Pétain is a lazy get-out,” said Mr Charasse. “It enables people to avoid facing the reality that France was responsible, not one place,” he told The Times.

Mr Charasse, a former teacher who was born in a nearby village, is infuriated when politicians abuse the name. Typical was Mr Sarkozy's speech on a D-Day invasion beach in Normandy last May. “The true France was not at Vichy. It did not collaborate,” said Mr Sarkozy.

Pétain's quarters are still sealed in their original state in what was the Hôtel du Parc, now a residential building. Only a plaque commemorates the 80 MPs who voted against transferring power to Pétain.

Mr Charasse wants to open a museum and study centre but his campaign is not backed by Claude Malhuret, the Mayor, a former minister who hails from Mr Sarkozy's UMP party and who blames Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand for the long refusal to face the truth of the wartime collaboration. He said that the redemption of Vichy was long overdue: “It's a scandal that there are ten conferences per year in Berlin, Hitler's city, and in Moscow, Stalin's city, while Vichy has been shunned.”

After the war, Mr de Gaulle drew a veil over the period for the sake of reconciliation. Until his death in 1996, Mr Mitterrand refused to recognise that the collaborationist state was France — although it was revealed that he himself had been on the Marshal's staff for a time. Only in 1995 did President Chirac acknowledge the responsibility of France at large.

Mr Malhuret is delighted about the EU conference, which he calls an opening to the world. “This town continues to pay through its image for misdeeds for which it is not responsible,” he said. “What could be more positive than an international conference on integration?”

The gathering has been organised by Brice Hortefeux, Minister for Immigration and National Identity, who comes from the region.

Under the jackboot

40 per cent of France remained unoccupied by German forces - areas in the south east - after the Franco-German armistice of 1940

150,000 Jews crossed the demarcation line to seek protection from the Vichy regime

40,000 Jewish refugees were held in concentration camps under French control

75,721 Jews were deported from Vichy France to death camps between 1942 and 1944

2,000 of those who were deported survived

Sources: www.britannica.com; Times archives

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