André Trigano, 94, has held public office for almost 50 years. But that isn’t enough for the ambitious Jewish mayor of the French town of Pamiers in the foothills of the Pyrenees. If he has it his way, he’ll serve for another seven-year term, until he’s 101. That’s how old he’ll be if he wins his campaign for re-election as mayor on June 28 and serves out the entire fixed-term.

“I hope I am not going to have to apologize again for not being dead,” Trigan recently said in an interview with BBC.

Trigano has lived a fascinating life. He was born to immigrant Algerian Jewish parents in Paris in 1925 and was 15 when the Nazis occupied the city during World War II. After his parents were tipped off by a police officer who lived in their building that their names were on a Gestapo arrest warrant, the family fled to the mountains of Ariège in the south of France.

Trigano joined the Resistance and was involved in assisting downed Allied pilots by forging documents that allowed them to escape to Spain. He was arrested three times during the war but somehow managed to survive unscathed until the war was over.

Trigano decided to stay in the south of the country and go into business. He established a camping holiday business, building on the tent-making business that his father and older brother has started before the war. The family subsequently won a contract to supply tents to the then-brand-new Club Med – which in its first 15 years was a camping holiday business – renting tents for vacations in locations such as Majorca, Corfu and Djerba in Tunisia.

The company was hugely successful and Trigano eventually acquired dozens of campsites in France, Spain and Portugal. His financial success came in handy for his side hobby of acquiring classic cars such as vintage Citroens, Cadillacs, Triumphs, Rolls Royces, and an Excalibur.

Meanwhile (in his spare time), Trigano was successful in politics as well, first serving as mayor of Mazeres for 24 years while simultaneously serving as an MP in the national parliament and then as mayor of Pamiers for 24 years. He has run in 19 elections and has lost only once.

At 94, his ambitions haven’t slowed down and he still has grand plans – that he revealed this week – to renovate the center of Pamiers. And no, he doesn’t think his age should have any bearing on his campaign. “When you build a 10-story building you don’t change architects after the fifth floor,” Trigano said. “If anyone wants my job, they’ll have to fight for it.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)