The founder of France’s extreme-right Front National party defended this week having described Nazi gas chambers as a ''detail of history''.
In words which will revive accusations that the party remains anti-Semitic, Jean-Marie Le Pen, 86, said in an interview with BFMTV channel he had 'never regretted' making similar statements in the past.
'What I said corresponds to what I think.’’The gas chambers were a detail of the war, unless we admit that the war was a detail of the gas chambers!,’' Le Pen declared.
'Repeatedly questioned about the Holocaust, he said:’’War is horrible, you know, a piece of shrapnel that tears your stomach, a bomb that decapitates you, a room in which you are asphyxiated, it's all pretty disgusting, it's true.’’
During the interview, he said ‘’the truth’’ should ‘’not shock anyone’’, and that historical reality should not be used to portray him as anti-Jewish.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is still a member of the European Parliament, was first convicted by a Munich court in 1999 for ‘’minimising the Holocaust’’ after telling a German extreme-right meeting that Nazi concentration camps and the gas chambers are ‘’what one calls a detail.’’
He has had a string of other racist and anti-Semitic convictions.
His daughter and current leader of the party Marine Le Pen immediately distanced herself from the comments saying she ‘’deeply disagrees’’ with what she described as her father’s her 'deliberately provocative' comments.
She has tried to steer the party away from its anti-Semitic and racist roots.
Speaking to daily Le Figaro about her father, she said: ‘’I deeply disagree with him. I take note of what he said but I believe that those coming over to vote for us understand what is going on. He is being deliberately provocative.’’
Jean-Marie Le Pen is still the Front National honorary president.
Marine Le Pen's party regularly wins up to 25 per cent of the popular vote at local and regional elections. She plans to be a candidate for the presidential election in 2017.