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Friday January 14, 2005

Le Pen calls Nazi occupation ‘not particularly inhuman’

paris (ap) | French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was quoted as saying that the Nazi occupation of France during World War II was not particularly brutal.

The National Front leader gave an interview to the small extreme-right paper Rivarol, which published the comments.

“In France at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhuman, even if there were a few blunders, inevitable in a country of [220,000 square miles],” he was quoted as saying.

The politician’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 Jan. 11.

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 resisters, 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 written statement.

Le Pen, 76, has a history of making remarks that jar France and has been convicted of racism or anti-Semitism at least six times. Once he called the Nazi gas chambers “a detail of the history of the Second World War.”

The National Front leader blames immigrants, especially from North Africa, for high unemployment. He wants to deport all illegal immigrants and tighten border controls.

Le Pen startled France and the world by qualifying for a one-on-one runoff against President Jacques Chirac in presidential elections in 2002. Horrified voters rallied behind Chirac in the second round, giving him a resounding 82 percent of the vote.

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