Israeli President Rivlin has denounced French extreme-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen's recent comments denying France's responsibility in the deportation of Jewish citizens to the Nazi death camp as "uniquely disturbing."

Speaking at a ceremony marking the end of Holocaust Remembrance Day at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot in the north of Israel, President Rivlin said: “Two weeks ago a French presidential candidate denied France’s responsibility for the deportation of its Jewish citizens to the Nazi concentration and death camps. A member of her party denied not only the French involvement in the deportation of Jews to their death, but the mass extermination itself.”

Marine Le Pen came second in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday with 21,7 %. Emmanuel Macron, a centrist independent and pro-EU candidate, came first with 24% of the votes. The runoff is to take place on May7.

Rivlin said: “As a sovereign state that has gained national independence, we have a duty to demand from other nations and states not to evade responsibility. Denying collaboration with the Nazis seeks to annul the political and moral responsibility that must stand at the heart of memory of the Holocaust for generations to come.”

He added: “We must wage a war against the current and dangerous wave of Holocaust denial. We must resist the renunciation of national responsibility in the name of alleged victimhood.”

The president also warned against what he termed “unholy alliances” between Israel and extreme right parties in Europe.

He said: “it could be thought mistakenly that we have common interests, it must be pointed out once again: We have not and will not have anything in common in antisemites in any guise.”

Leaders of French Jewry had mixed reactions to the success of Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.

“Satisfaction and concern,” wrote Francis Kalifat, president of Crif, the umbrella representative group of French Jewish communities, on Twitter.

Kalifat has called anti-immigration and anti-EU Le Pen a “candidate of hate.” He called on voters to elect Macron regardless of their opinion of his policies just to make sure Le Pen does not become president. The pattern, known in France as a “republican front,” has been used to keep the National Front out of power.

Kalifat said he was “worried to see National Front making it to the main event of French democracy,” but “satisfied to see a republican in the lead” — a term that means a person who is attached to the French nation’s founding values.

The National Front won the first presidential round in France only once before in 2002, with 18 percent of the vote, and was soundly defeated in the second round.

National Front has made considerable electoral gains since Le Pen became its leader in 2011, succeeding her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Holocaust revisionist who has made repeated anti-Semitic remarks. The party advocates pulling out of the European Union, stopping immigration from Muslim countries and imposing limitations on religious freedoms.

Marine Le Pen earlier this year called for banning the wearing of the kippah in public and making it illegal for French nationals to also have an Israeli passport, steps she said were necessary because of the principle of equality in order to facilitate similar limitations on Muslims.

She has called on Jews to make certain “sacrifices” in order to fight radical islam.