France's Le Pen Defends Nazi Remarks
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Reuters
14/01/2005
Kerstin Gehmlich
France's political class has united in condemnation of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen over his remarks that the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two had not been "particularly inhumane".
Le Pen, who has described the Holocaust as a "detail" of the war's history in the past, dismissed the furore as a plot to discredit his campaign against the EU constitution, which is backed by most mainstream parties on the right and left.
The government has called for a preliminary police inquiry to determine whether Le Pen broke the law with his comments.
"He's disqualified himself as a politician," Justice Minister Dominique Perben said on Thursday, adding Le Pen should explain himself before a court.
Jewish organisations and anti-racism groups said they were shocked by Le Pen's lies, and the leaders of Communist and Socialist opposition parties said he was guilty of revisionism.
But Le Pen said he stood by his comments.
"It's true, and it's scandalous enough that, 60 years after the war, one is not allowed to express oneself in a coherent and calm way on these subjects," he told RTL radio.
"I note that if one compares the German occupation of France with the occupation in a certain number of other European countries, then proportionately, it's in France where it was the least painful," Le Pen told RTL.
During the Nazi German occupation of France from 1940 until 1944, about 76,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps. Only some 2,500 survived.
Sparking the wave of protests, Le Pen told right-wing weekly Rivarol in its January 7 edition: "In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km."
France anti-racism laws have made denying the Holocaust a crime punishable by fines or prison.
Le Pen, who has courted controversy throughout his career, alarmed Europe in 2002 by reaching the second round of France's presidential election on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform.
He is now campaigning against the European Union's constitution, and said the political outrage sparked by his comments was meant to discredit this campaign.
"They want to disqualify the advocates of the 'no' because the supporters of the 'yes' are afraid of failure," Le Pen said.
French voters are to decide on the text intended to streamline EU decision-making in a referendum before the summer.
President Jacques Chirac has said he does not want the referendum to be sidetracked by domestic politics. But he is wary that voters might use the vote to punish the government for unpopular reforms and high unemployment.
Some 59 percent of French are in favour of the EU text, a survey showed this week. But previous national votes have seen large pro-Europe majorities in polls collapse to small margins at the ballot box.
Commentators said Le Pen just made the Nazi comments to propel himself back into public debate.
"The only trick he finds (to do that) is to produce a new scandal on the occupation period," Serge Klarsfeld, from an association for children of deportees, told France Info radio.
French prosecutors are also investigating comments by Le Pen's number two, Bruno Gollnisch, who questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers to carry out the Holocaust.
Friday, January 14th, 2005
Le Pen defends nazi remarks
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