Thursday, January 13, 2005

Outrage in France as Le Pen says: "Nazi occupation was not inhumane"


The Government has called for his arrest and the usual cabal has wailed and whined about the upcoming "Auschwiz Remembrance Day" coming up on January 27th.

If only one, just one Greek electoral leader of this caliber , could be this bold. I'm not talking about the Golden fringe. ....After all, Le Pen's Nationalist party is the second party of France, having beaten out the Socialists and the Communists in many parts of that country. Le Pen, whether the Jews and the Americans and the left, likes it or not,is the French mainstream. Let's not forget that France is also a nuclear power...

The two electoral Nationalist parties in Greece can barely grasp more than 3 percent combined and they would not DARE to make such bold statements on Jewish versions of history.

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Le Pen irks French government with Nazi remarks


PARIS, Jan 12 (Reuters) - France threatened on Wednesday to take legal action against far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for saying the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two had not been "particularly inhumane."



The government, anti-racism organisations and Jewish groups sharply condemned Le Pen's latest controversial comments, made in an interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol.

"It's not only the European Union and globalisation we have to free our country of. It's also the lies about its history, lies that are protected by exceptional measures," Le Pen said in comments published in Rivarol's Jan. 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."


The Justice Ministry called for a preliminary police inquiry to determine whether Le Pen's comments broke the law.


"He should explain himself before the law," Justice Minister Dominique Perben told LCI television.


France anti-racism laws have made denying the Holocaust a crime, punishable by fines or prison.


Le Pen, who in 1987 dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" of history, alarmed Europe in 2002 by reaching the second round of France's presidential election on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform.


During the Nazi German occupation of France from 1940 until 1944, about 76,000 Jews were deported. Only some 2,500 returned.


The CRIF umbrella group of Jewish organisations said it was "shocked" by Le Pen's comments.


"These statements tarnish the memory of all victims of Nazism ... and of the entire French population which was submitted to the most atrocious of occupations and humiliations for more than four years," it said.


France's junior minister for veterans, Hamlaoui Mekachera, said he had read Le Pen's comments with "astonishment" and dismissed Le Pen's "attempts to rewrite history."


Richard Serero, director-general of France's Licra anti-racism league, said of Le Pen: "These comments are shabby."


French prosecutors have already opened a judicial investigation into comments by Le Pen's number two, Bruno Gollnisch, who questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers in the Holocaust.


Le Pen was convicted and ordered to pay a symbolic one franc fine for his 1987 comments, when he said the gas chambers were a "detail in the history of the Second World War."


© Copyright Reuters Ltd.

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