French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his ministers stormed out of parliament in protest Tuesday after an opposition deputy accused the government of flirting with Nazi ideology.
The accusation from opposition Socialist lawmaker Serge Letchimy came in response to Interior Minister Claude Gueant's remark at the weekend that not all civilisations were equal.
Letchimy said in parliament: "You, Mr. Gueant... you bring us back day after day to those European ideologies which gave birth to the concentration camps".
He then asked: "Mr. Gueant, the Nazi regime, which was so worried about purity, was that a civilization?"
That provoked uproar among government ministers and deputies from President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party, who walked out en masse. The weekly question time was subsequently suspended.
Gueant, who is also responsible for immigration and is known as a hardliner, provoked a storm of controversy with the comments on Saturday.
"Contrary to what the left's relativist ideology says, for us all civilizations are not of equal value," he told a gathering of right-wing students.
"Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred," he said in his speech, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
He also stressed the need to "protect our civilization".
The left denounced his speech as an attempt by Sarkozy's camp to woo supporters of rival candidate Marine Le Pen's extreme-right National Front ahead of a two-round presidential election in April and May.
Richard Prasquier, who heads CRIF, the umbrella representative group of French Jewish organizations, said he "would not use the term civilization which is a very complex set of things, but rather say that values systems are not equal."
"What I think is that political systems, legal systems, moral systems are not equal and I am happy to be in a country where there is gender equality, equal between men and women, freedom of expression, the ability for anyone to live his life normally, whether he belongs to a majority or a minority, " he told France Info radio.