Party reeling over alleged statement about Holocaust
PARIS (AP) — The horrors of the Second World War Nazi death camps moved front and centre in France’s presidential campaign on Friday, nine days before the election, reawakening the anti-Semitic stigma that has clung to the party of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and that she has spent more than six years trying to erase.
Transforming the National Front into a voter-friendly party without compromising its anti-system essence — which is her banner — has been perhaps her toughest battle preparing for her dream job as chief of state.
Her efforts, took a hit after remarks questioning the Holocaust allegedly made in 2000 by the man chosen to temporarily replace her as party chief surfaced in the French press.
Le Pen — who once called Nazi death camps the “height of barbary” — firmly denied that anyone in the party leadership would cast doubt on the extermination of six million Jews and others.
“Let things be very clear. I abhor these theories,” she said in a televised interview.
“There is no one in the leadership of the National Front who defends this kind of thesis.”
The alleged remarks 17 years ago of JeanFrancois Jalkh, a discrete party vice-president and longtime member, that raised the question of whether Le Pen risks throttling France backward to its darkest moments if she defeats centrist rival Emmanuel Macron, who is favoured.
Jalkh firmly denies French media reports that he questioned whether Zyklon B poison gas was used in death camps. Lawyer David Dassa-Le Deist said he was filing a defamation suit against Le Monde newspaper, which identified his client as a negationist — someone who denies the Holocaust.
Surmounting that stigma is critical for Le Pen to obtain a majority in the final-round vote and surpass Macron, a former economy minister and banker favoured to win.