NEW YORK / PARIS – Leaders of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on Sunday condemned remarks made by the founder and long-time leader of the French National Front (FN) party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in video had remarked about Jewish singer Patrick Bruel: "We do an oven load next time" ("On fera une fournée la prochaine fois").
“For the umpteenth time, Mr. Le Pen has made unacceptable, sickening statements with respect to the Holocaust. Clearly, he is an unrepentant anti-Semite who is poisoning French politics, and frankly, a mild rebuke by Marine Le Pen is not good enough. If she wants to show that her party has changed under her leadership, she must strip her father of his post of honorary FN president and make sure he leaves the political scene for good. If she again fails to act, the credibility of her party is in tatters,” WJC President Ronald S. Lauder said.
WJC Vice-President Roger Cukierman, the head of the French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF, declared: "We are shocked by Jean-Marie Le Pen's anti-Semitic, provocative statements. The honorary president of the National Front again is displaying his habitual anti-Semitism, for which he has been condemned many times. The CRIF calls on all democrats to promote inter-ethnic comity and to condemn such postures of hatred."
The National Front, which has been led by Marine Le Pen since 2011, polled 26 percent in the European Parliament elections in France last month, becoming the strongest party in the country. Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the FN in 1972 and led it for nearly four decades until his daughter took over. Le Pen was convicted several times of racism and incitement to racial hatred. In 1987, he called the Nazi gas chambers "a detail in the history of World War II."
