Yahoo News Le Pen on back foot as Macron makes thinly-veiled reference to Front National Holocaust denial
Emmanuel Macron visited the scene of the worst Nazi atrocity in occupied France on Friday as Marine Le Pen's Front National became embroiled in a furore over Holocaust denial allegations.
Mr Macron, 39, the favourite to win the French presidency on May 7, was shown around the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, central France, where SS troops massacred 642 people in June 1944.
He was hosted by the last remaining survivor among the six people who escaped. "To not remember is to repeat the mistakes of history," he said afterwards.
The visit took place as Ms Le Pen's stand-in as party leader, Jean-Francois Jalkh, was summarily replaced by Steeve Briois, a popular FN mayor from northern France, after Mr Jalkh was accused of praising the work of a convicted Holocaust denier.
In a French academic journal published in 2005, Mr Jalkh, an MEP, was quoted as praising the "rigorous" research of Robert Faurisson in an interview in 2000.
"What I'm saying, and what really surprised me, in the work of a genuine negationist or revisionist... is the well-worked, rigorous nature of the argument put forward," he was quoted as saying in "Le Temps des Savoirs" (The Time of Knowledge).
Mr Jalkh denied being a Holocaust denier but said he had spoken to a chemistry expert about Zyklon B, which was used in the extermination chambers.
“I consider that from a technical standpoint it is impossible – and I stress, impossible – to use it in mass exterminations. Why? Because you need several days to decontaminate a space … where Zyklon B has been used," he is cited as saying.
Mr Aliot said that Mr Jalkh would file a legal complaint over what he called totally unfounded accusations of ambiguous stances on the mass killing of Jews during World War Two.
His departure, however, could seriously damage the campaign of Ms Le Pen, who spent years trying to detoxify her party from its revisionist, anti-Semitic past.
Mr Jalkh, who intends to file a legal complaint, is also among seven people called to trial in an alleged illegal financing scheme for the party - one of the other challenges facing the far-Right candidate's presidential campaign.
Asked whether she would be prepared to accept any revisionists in her government, Ms Le Pen said yesterday/FRI: "Let me make one thing clear: I abhor these theories. I don't accept that one can defend them.
"There are no members of the FN leadership who defends these theories," she said on BFMTV.
French presidential election polling - round 2
The incident was an undeniable setback for Ms Le Pen, who has spent years trying to detoxify her party from its anti-Semitic past under her father Jean-Marie Le Pen.
She herself provoked outrage during the first round of campaigning for denying that the French state was to blame for a notorious round-up of Jews in Nazi-occupied Paris.
Yesterday, she said: "Today, the danger for our Jewish compatriots ... is the rise of Islamist fundamentalism. I have said it and will say it again: I am their only shield."
Polls show Mr Macron would beat Ms Le Pen by 19 percentage points in the run-off but analysts have warned that high levels of abstention by moderates or a shock event could yield an upset.
Several public figures came out in support of Mr Macron yesterday, including World Cup football hero Zinedine Zidane, long France's most popular personality, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
"I have absolutely no doubt that Emmanuel Macron will be a strong president if he is elected, as I hope he will be," Mrs Merkel told RND newspaper group.
Ms Le Pen has sought to woo voters on either side of the political spectrum, urging leftists to shun Mr Macron, a pro-EU, free market ex-banker and conservatives that he is soft on terror.
Yesterday, she released an online plea to supporters of radical Left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who won 19.6 per cent of the vote on April 23, to back her rather than Mr Macron, the choice of "the oligarchy".
After long refusing to endorse either candidate, Mr Mélenchon finally broke his silence to say he would not vote for Ms Le Pen, but would not officially endorse Mr Macron either in a runoff he dubbed "extreme finance versus the extreme Right".
An Odoxa poll suggested that 40 per cent of his supporters would back Macron, some 41 per cent would abstain and 19 per cent would vote Le Pen.
