Cosmair Chairman Quits Over Charges He Helped Nazis

The chairman of Cosmair, the U.S. subsidiary of French cosmetics giant L’Oreal, said Wednesday that he had resigned after charges of Nazi collaboration in World War II.

Jacques Correze, accused by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld of helping the Gestapo evict Jews from their houses and shops in Paris in 1941, said in a statement that he felt obliged to offer his resignation to the board because the controversy risked damaging Cosmair Inc.

He has denied taking part in operations against French Jews and produced documents that he said show he helped the French Resistance in the last years of the Nazi occupation of France.

A spokesman for L’Oreal said the 79-year-old chairman’s decision was taken “in agreement with L’Oreal’s management.”

“Given a controversy which concerns me alone, but which is capable of harming Cosmair Inc., and given my state of health, I consider it my duty to ask to be discharged, effective from today,” Correze said.

Cosmair said in a statement issued in New York that its board expected to name Correze’s successor later in the week.

Klarsfeld told Reuters last week that he had sent the U.S. Office of Special Investigations documents that he said proved Correze helped carry out evictions of Paris Jews.

Klarsfeld said he had asked the office to bar Correze from U.S. territory.