Le Pen says France not responsible for mass arrests of Jews during World War Two
Le Pen’s remarks reopens bitter wounds left over from World War Two
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen drew protests from her election rivals and the Israeli government on Monday by denying the French state’s responsibility for a mass arrest of Jews in Paris during World War Two.
Le Pen’s comments appeared at odds with years of efforts to make her once-pariah National Front (FN) more palatable to mainstream voters. With only two weeks to go to the first round of voting, the mis-step might hurt her election chances.
“I think France isn’t responsible for the Vel d’Hiv,” Le Pen said on Sunday, referring to the Nazi-ordered roundup by French police in the Velodrome d’Hiver cycling stadium of 13,000 Jews, who were then deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in July 1942.
“I think that, in general, if there are people responsible, it is those who were in power at the time. It is not France,” she said in an interview with media groups Le Figaro, RTL and LCI.
While her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the FN until he passed the baton to his daughter in 2011, revelled in minimising the Holocaust, Marine Le Pen has sought to purge the FN of anti-Semitism and even expelled her father from the party because of his comments.
