Marine Le Pen Lays Wreath At Holocaust Memorial
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate in the French presidential elections, visited a Holocaust memorial in Marseille days after news that her choice for interim party head had denied aspects of the Holocaust.
Le Pen on Sunday laid a wreath at a memorial in Marseille to French victims of the Holocaust. The memorial was erected in memory of 30 Jewish women and children who were rounded up by the Gestapo in 1943.
The French government in 1954 dedicated the last Sunday in April as “National Day of Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of Deportation.”
There was no media present at Le Pen’s wreath-laying. A campaign worker later tweeted a picture of the ceremony.
Earlier this month, Le Pen came under fire for saying that her country is not responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews to death camps in 1942.
Jean-François Jalkh, who took Marine Le Pen’s place at the helm of the National Front Party last week, was replaced on Friday, two days after his appointment, a day after an interview from 2000 with the Le Monde daily newspaper surfaced in which he was quoted as questioning the use of the Zyklon B poison by Nazis during the Holocaust to kill Jews.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
