The French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has denied that the French state was responsible for the wartime roundup of Jews at a Paris cycling track who were then sent to Nazi death camps. But Le Pen told the LCI television channel on Sunday: “I don’t think France is responsible for the Vel d’Hiv.”She added: “I think that, generally speaking, if there are people responsible, it’s those who were in power at the time. “Some had forgotten that Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen,” he told BFMTV. Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the Front National in 1972 and is estranged from his daughter, has been convicted repeatedly for antisemitic and racist comments such as calling the Holocaust a “detail of history”. The CRIF, an umbrella group of French Jewish organisations, and the Jewish students’ union both denounced Le Pen for the comments, describing them as “revisionist”.

Source: The Guardian April 09, 2017 20:03 UTC