Marine Le Pen’s Denial of French Guilt

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/opinion/marine-le-pens-denial-of-french-guilt.html

Version 0 of 1.

Marine Le Pen showed the world that she is, after all, her father’s daughter when she said France was not responsible for rounding up Jews during World War II to be sent to German concentration camps. Ms. Le Pen worked hard in recent years to cleanse her far-right National Front party of the virulent anti-Semitism — spouted by her father and other party leaders — that made it unpalatable for decades for all but hardened bigots on the political fringes.

Yet, there she was on Sunday declaring “France was not responsible for the Vel d’Hiv,” one of the worst stains on France’s history. On July 16 and 17, 1942, the French police arrested nearly 13,000 Jews, including 4,000 children, in and around Paris. About 6,000 were sent to a transit camp on the outskirts of Paris to await deportation to concentration camps. About 7,000 were incarcerated in the Vélodrome d’Hiver sports arena in Paris for five days before suffering the same fate. Altogether — with the willing, even enthusiastic assistance of French authorities — around 76,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps.

After a storm of outrage, Ms. Le Pen cynically explained: “I consider that France and its Republic were in London during the occupation, and that the Vichy regime wasn’t France.” This is a shameful attempt to exonerate France for terrible crimes. As Jacques Chirac, the first French president to apologize for Vel d’Hiv, said in 1995: “France, the homeland of the Enlightenment and of the rights of man, a land of welcome and asylum, on that day committed the irreparable.” Or, as President François Hollande said: It was “a crime committed in France by France.”

Ms. Le Pen says that her aim is for the French “to be proud to be French again,” and that French children are taught “to only see the darkest historical aspects.” But there is no pride, only shame, in denying the crimes of the past.

Ms. Le Pen’s efforts to rebrand the National Front primarily as an anti-European Union, anti-globalization party have bolstered her popularity to the point that she has a serious shot at winning the first round in the presidential contest, on April 23, if not the second round, on May 7. Whatever the cold political calculation behind her remarks about France’s past, she has done French voters the great service of tearing away any illusion about what kind of candidate she is, and what the National Front stands for.