An anti-Semite politician has France in a stir.
The Nazi occupation of France was not particularly brutal, French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was quoted as saying.
The comments by the National Front leader were published in the small extreme-right newspaper Rivarol.
“In France at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhuman, even if there were a few blunders,” he was quoted as saying. Such things were “inevitable” in a country of 220,000 square miles, he said.
Le Pen’s office confirmed the interview had taken place but said it could not verify the exact comments, as no one had checked them against a recording. The remarks were published in the paper’s Jan. 7 edition but did not come to wider attention until Wednesday.
French Justice Minister Dominique Perben said he was outraged and immediately asked for a preliminary inquiry into Le Pen’s remarks.
“He will have to explain himself before the justice system,” Perben said.
CRIF, an umbrella group of French Jewish organizations, said it was “particularly shocked” by the comments. During the war, some 76,000 Jews, including 12,000 children, were deported from France, many to Auschwitz. Only 2,500 survived.
“These comments taint the memory of all victims of Nazism — deportees and the Resistance, and the entire French population, which was subjected for more than four years to the most atrocious of occupations and humiliations,” CRIF said in a statement.
Le Pen, 76, has a history of making such remarks, and he has been convicted of racism or anti-Semitism at least six times. He once called the Nazi gas chambers “a detail of the history of the Second World War.”
Sickening? Inaccurate? Pathetic? Yes. But should it be criminal? I don’t think so.