Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.</s>As she prepares to go head to head with runoff opponent and center-right candidate Emmanuel Macron, Front National party candidate Marine Le Pen is being increasingly portrayed as France’s own Donald Trump. While the two populists exhibit plenty of parallels, some historically-rooted variations in their approaches to isolationism, fiscal policy, religion and other hot button issues…</s>(JTA) – The leadership of the far-right National Front party in France replaced its pick for interim president following reports he had denied aspects of the Holocaust.

Jean-François Jalkh, who took Marine Le Pen’s place at the helm this week temporarily in connection with her campaign ahead of the May 7 runoff in the presidential elections, was replaced on Friday, two days after his appointment, by Steeve Briois, the mayor of Henin Beaumont and a member of the European Parliament, the Le Point magazine reported.

On Thursday, the Le Monde daily reported that Jalkh is disputing the veracity of quotes attributed to him in an interview from 2000 in which he was quoted as questioning the use of the Zyklon B poison by Nazis during the Holocaust to kill Jews.

“Personally, I think that it is impossible from a technical point of view to use for mass extermination,” he said of the use of Zyklon B in gas chambers. “Why? Because it takes several days for a place where Zyklon B was used to be decontaminated.”

Louis Aliot, the life-partner of Marine Le Pen and a senior National Front member, did not offer an explanation for the decision to replace Jalkh, whom Aliot said “did not make the statements” attributed to him.

Claims based on bogus science and chemistry especially is a tactic of Holocaust deniers, notably David Irving of the United Kingdom.

According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, “Zyklon B was delivered to the camps in crystal pellet form. As soon as the pellets were exposed to air they turned into poisonous gas. A Nazi equipped with a gas mask would empty the crystals into the packed gas chamber through a small opening. Within minutes, the victims were dead.”

National Front’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has several convictions for denying aspects of the Holocaust, as well as for inciting racial hatred against Jews.

His daughter, who succeeded him in 2011 as party leader, has attempted to rehabilitate the party’s image, condemning the Holocaust and distancing herself from her father’s anti-Semitic rhetoric. But last month she said that “France is not responsible” for its authorities’ actions during the Nazi occupation, when French police officers helped Nazis round up Jews and send them to be murdered.

Under Marine Le Pen, the National Front has seen a purge in which dozens of members were kicked out of the party for making anti-Semitic statements or expressing revisionist views about the Holocaust. She kicked her father out of the party in 2015 for making anti-Semitic statements about a Jewish singer, whom Jean-Marie Le Pen said should “go into the oven.”

National Front won just over 21 per cent of the votes in the first round of the presidential elections on April 23, trailing the centrist, independent candidate Emmanuel Macron by two points. It was the best result in the history of National Front, which made it to the second round for the first time in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen won 18 per cent of the vote in the first round.

In a poll from earlier this week conducted by Paris Match, CNews and Sud Radio, 60.5 per cent of respondents said they would vote for Macron on May 7, compared to 39.5 per cent who said they would vote for Le Pen.</s>PARIS (REUTERS) - Marine Le Pen's bid to defy the odds and win election as French president risked a setback on Friday (April 28) when the man named interim head of her National Front (FN) party stood down to defend himself against charges that he shares the views of Holocaust deniers.

Days from the May 7 ballot when the far-right leader faces off against centrist ex-banker Emmanuel Macron, the abrupt exit of Jean-Francois Jalkh awoke ghosts from the Front's past and revived a furore sparked by Le Pen's father when he called the Nazi gas chambers a "detail" of history.

The renewed controversy threatens moves by Le Pen, who expelled her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from the party two years ago, to cleanse the FN's image of xenophobic and anti-semitic associations and make it more palatable to a broader electorate.

"With all we know of the revisionist views the Le Pen family has voiced in the past, there comes a time when the women and men of France must open their eyes to where the National Front comes from," Richard Ferrand, Macron's campaign director, said.

Though opinion polls still show her losing in the May 7 face-off with Macron, she has in the past few days been scoring public relations points off him with well-timed appearances and comments.

Jalkh, a long-time ally of Le Pen senior who founded the National Front and one of 35 Front members elected to parliament in the mid-1980s, had been due to take over as interim party chief, a post Marine Le Pen vacated to focus on the presidential race.

Front member Louis Aliot, Marine Le Pen's partner in private life who announced the move, told BFM TV: "He (Jalkh) wants to defend himself and he will be filing a legal complaint because he feels his honour has been attacked, and I can tell you he firmly and formally contests what he is accused of." Steeve Briois, another of the party's four vice presidents, would take Jalkh's place, Aliot said.

At issue are comments attributed to Jalkh in a conversation with a researcher in 2005 about the work of Robert Faurisson, a professor convicted more than once for questioning the scale of Jewish extermination in Nazi gas chambers during World War Two.

Le Pen's father, who was tried and convicted of inciting racial hatred for his remarks on the Holocaust, said as recently as 2015 that he had a right to make such comments because he believed them to be true.

In the run-up to her bid for power, Marine Le Pen has sought to cleanse the FN's image of such associations and recast it as a nativist, or "French first", party that opposes immigration, globalisation and European Union membership.

Her father appears rapidly to be turning into a thorn into her side as she strives to mount a convincing campaign against Macron.

Last Tuesday, after a first round of voting from which she emerged as one of the two runoff candidates, the 88-year-old former paratrooper said she should have campaigned more aggressively following the example of US President Donald Trump.

He courted controversy again on Friday when he said a remembrance ceremony for the policeman killed last week by an attacker in Paris "exalted" the concept of gay marriage because the gay policeman's male partner was given the stage to speak in his memory.

Marine Le Pen, who attended the state ceremony with other political figures including Macron, distanced herself from his comment. "I felt it was a very dignified ceremony and I was very moved by the speech of his partner," she said.

Jalkh was a little-known figure from the old guard of the party, until his name emerged as interim party leader this week. Newspaper articles relayed the Holocaust-related comments he is purported to have made.

Also unearthed was a newspaper report from 1991 that said Jalkh had attended an anniversary rally held by supporters of Marshal Philippe Petain, French wartime leader and Nazi collaborator, in July of that year.

As Le Pen and her party grappled with a potentially damaging turn of events, Macron, headed for a campaign visit to a village that has been preserved as it was when SS soldiers killed nearly all of its inhabitants in 1944.

Macron was expected mid-afternoon in Oradour-sur-Glane, the village in central France, now a "frozen-in-time" memorial to the 642 men, women and children killed in the space of a few hours in June 1944.

Le Pen said on her return to Paris from an overnight rally in the southern city of Nice that Jalkh was deeply affected by the accusations against him. She said the matter of party leader had been solved with Briois being named to the position.

A new Opinionway poll published at midday showed Macron, like in most other polls, beating Le Pen in the final ballot with 60 per cent of the total vote against her 40. An Odoxa poll put the margin between them at 59 to 41.</s>The acting leader of the National Front, Jean-François Jalkh, stepped down on Friday after he was mired in controversy for comments he allegedly made over a decade ago about the gas used at Nazi extermination camps.

Jalkh replaced Marine Le Pen this week as National Front leader after she temporarily stepped aside in an attempt to distance herself from her party.

But Jalkh's time at the top didn't last long.

He stepped down on Friday morning after facing criticism for comments he allegedly made over a decade ago about the gas used at Nazi extermination camps.

"I consider that from a technical standpoint it is impossible - and I stress, impossible - to use it [Zyklon B] in mass exterminations. Why? Because you need several days to decontaminate a space … where Zyklon B has been used," he said in an interview that was unearthed on Wednesday by a reporter with La Croix newspaper.

The chemical agency Zyklon B was used by Nazis in concentration camps in Poland and beyond.

Jalkh has denied any memory of making the comments,

But it appears he did indeed make the comments, in an interview with Magali Boumaza, a political scientist behind a thesis on the National Front.

Le Pen and Jalkh at the Elysee presidential Palace.

The scandal that followed was enough to force Jalkh to step down from the top spot of the National Front.

The party's spokesman said that Jalkh will press charges, although it remains unclear as yet whether this will be against the newspaper, the journalist, or even the political scientist who first published the comments.

Jalkh will be replaced by Steeve Briois, the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont in northern France, where Le Pen held her election night party after the first round on Sunday.

Members of the National Front have been accused of anti-Semitism and even Holocaust denial many times before.</s>Marine Le Pen, France's far-right presidential candidate, said she would name former rival, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, as her prime minister if she wins the May 7 election.

The two appeared together at a news conference in Paris, Saturday. "We will form a government of national unity that brings together people chosen for their competence and their love of France," Le Pen said, as quoted by Reuters.

A day earlier, the interim leader of Le Pen's National Front party stepped down over controversial comments about the Holocaust. Jean-François Jalkh had only had the job for three days.

Also on Friday, Dupont-Aignan announced his endorsement of Le Pen. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, it is the first time a mainstream party has aligned itself with the far-right group.

Le Pen has been seeking to de-demonize the National Front, by drawing in more young people and women. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, known for anti-Semitism and xenophobia, founded the party and led it until his daughter replaced him in 2011 and later kicked him out. The two no longer speak.

DuPont-Aignan is with the right wing party "Stand Up France," and said Saturday, he does not consider Le Pen an extreme right candidate. The New York Times reports, the two politicians share numerous views, including a Euroskepticism and a hardline approach to security. That stands in contrast to Le Pen's opponent, Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old centrist who is pro-European Union and a fierce defender of immigration.

DuPont-Aignan lost the first round of the election with less than five percent of the vote, but he will presumably bring those near 2 million voters to Le Pen's side on election day.

Polls have shown Macron leading in the race, but Le Pen has been gaining ground.</s>France's troubled wartime past is taking centre stage in the presidential race as centrist Emmanuel Macron visits a Nazi massacre site and Marine Le Pen's far-right party suffers a new blow over alleged Holocaust denial.

The two candidates facing a May 7 run-off offer starkly different visions of France's future - Mr Macron's embrace of a globalised, diverse nation within an open-bordered Europe contrasts with Ms Le Pen's protectionist, tightly policed France independent of the EU.

After courting blue-collar voters earlier this week around the campaign's top issue - jobs - the candidates are increasingly focusing on their opposing views of French identity.

Railing against "mass immigration" at a rally on Thursday in Nice, Ms Le Pen told supporters: "This presidential election is a referendum for or against France.

"I call on you to choose France. Not Mr Macron, that's for sure, whose platform is about the dilution of France. On his horizon is the deconstruction of France."

Mr Macron shot back with a vigorous TV defence of the united Europe and institutions built over the past half a century to ensure peace among long-warring neighbours through free trade.

He reminded viewers of the racism and anti-Semitism that still stain Ms Le Pen's party despite her efforts to detoxify it and broaden her base, noting "offensive statements on our history, on our political life" by interim National Front leader Jean-Francois Jalkh.

Mr Jalkh, who took over as party leader this week after Ms Le Pen said she would step aside to concentrate on her campaign, has come under fire over comments reported in a 2000 interview in which he allegedly cast doubt on the truth of Nazi gas chambers.

National Front vice president Louis Aliot said on BFM television that Mr Jalkh is stepping down to avoid further damage to the party, but he is contesting allegations of Holocaust denial, a crime in France.

Mr Jalkh is among seven people called to trial in an alleged illegal financing scheme for the party - one of the other challenges facing Ms Le Pen's campaign.

Mr Aliot said Mr Jalkh will be replaced as party leader by Steeve Briois, mayor of Ms Le Pen's electoral fiefdom of Henin-Beaumont in depressed northern France.

Mr Macron is taking the moral high ground with a visit to Oradour-sur-Glane, a ghost town left behind after the largest massacre in Nazi-occupied France seven decades ago.

The town is today a phantom village, with burned-out cars and abandoned buildings left as testimony to its history.

On June 10, 1944, four days after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, an SS armoured division herded hundreds of civilians into barns and a church, blocked the doors, and set the town on fire. A total of 642 men, women and children died.</s>The man appointed to replace Marine Le Pen as head of her French far-right National Front party has stepped down to prepare legal action over allegations he expressed doubt about Nazi gas chambers.

Jean-Francois Jalkh was named as interim party chief when Ms Le Pen vacated the position earlier this week to focus on the presidential race.

She is set to face off against centrist ex-banker Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the presidential election on May 7.

But the party faced fresh turmoil when comments that Mr Jalkh made about the Holocaust in 2000 resurfaced alongside the news of his new appointment.

Mr Jalkh made the comments while in conversation with a researcher about the work of Robert Faurisson, a professor convicted more than once for questioning the scale of Jewish extermination in Nazi gas chambers during World War II.

Also unearthed was a newspaper report from 1991 that said Mr Jalkh had attended a rally held by supporters of Marshal Philippe Petain, a French wartime leader and Nazi collaborator.

"He [Mr Jalkh] wants to defend himself and he will be filing a legal complaint because he feels his honour has been attacked, and I can tell you he firmly and formally contests what he is accused of," Front member Louis Aliot told BFM TV.

Mr Aliot said Steeve Briois, another of the party's four vice-presidents, would take Mr Jalkh's place.

In the run-up to her bid for power, Ms Le Pen has sought to cleanse the Front's image of xenophobic and anti-Semitic associations, recasting it as a "French first" party that opposes immigration, globalisation and European Union membership.

Ms Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has in the past referred to the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history.

The founder of National Front, who has been convicted of inciting racial hatred for his remarks on the Holocaust, said as recently as 2015 that he had a right to make such comments because he believed them to be true.

As Ms Le Pen and her party grappled with a potentially damaging turn of events, Mr Macron headed for a campaign visit to a village that has been preserved as it was when Nazi soldiers killed nearly all of its inhabitants in 1944.</s>Paris (CNN) The next 10 days will decide Marine Le Pen's destiny. For her, this is the culmination of a lifelong dream of reaching the top of French politics: The presidency.

Or at least that is what she believes.

France is suffering from high unemployment, a stagnant economy, security fears, and the country remains bitterly divided as the government struggles to cope with immigration and integration.

It is this fertile ground of disenchantment with the political class and a desire for change upon which Le Pen has built her campaign.

And yet, as election day draws closer, it is evident that she and those around her are becoming ever more tense.

Campaign posters of French presidential election candidates Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron in the Le Pen stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, northern France.

On Tuesday, at a televised debate in which I was invited to be part of panel questioning Le Pen, the pressure that is mounting on one of France's most divisive figures became clear.

Perhaps it's the nature of the campaign, the constant public appearances, the hundreds of interviews she's given, or the thousands of hands she has shaken on a near-daily basis.

Or perhaps it's the polls -- a series of predictions which suggest she is languishing at least 20 points behind her rival, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

What is obvious is that her campaign is feeling the heat -- which is increasing each and every day.

There were a flurry of phone calls between her team and French television company TF1 to discuss the logistics of the panel.

It seemed that my presence on the panel had caused concern: I was told that Le Pen's team, fearing a trap, were particularly wary of the participation of a representative of the international media.

The premise of the program was to take the two finalists, in separate episodes, and to imagine what they would be like in power.

It was important for Le Pen to avoid the trap of appearing like a populist candidate, with aggressive attacks on the press.

The point for her was to rise above that image and instead appear "presidential."

In the make-up room we shared at the TV studio, she was all smiles and charm; we made small talk.

I asked her how she was coping with what must be the most punishing of schedules.

"Adrenaline" she said. "And no dinners."

We spoke about our children -- we each have three -- and her desire to protect hers from the media.

She told me about her vigilance in ensuring they remained free of the press attention which had besieged her at such a young age, as the daughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Outside the make-up room as we waited to go on set, her team were drinking champagne while eying me with more than a hint of suspicion.

Once the cameras were rolling, though, Le Pen appeared focused, confident, ready.

But it was also there that she also showcased her uncanny ability never to actually answer a question. Le Pen rambles. It means journalists are forced to interrupt her to get a word in.

These techniques, combined with what was apparently a determined effort to seem gracious and cheerful were very effective.

Even when answering my questions, she refrained from going on the attack, answering with a smile instead.

Le Pen, supremely confident, has never been one to shy away from a fight.

This is a woman who has spent much of her life living as part of France's most despised families.

She was just eight years old when a bomb ripped through her parents' Parisian home in a suspected assassination attempt on her father.

Growing up in the public eye, surrounded by security, Le Pen's whole life has been a battle to simply be who she is.

But just who that is remains open to question -- particularly as she has sought to move the National Front away from the Holocaust denial rhetoric of her father.

Jean-Marie Le Pen made it through to the Presidential runoff election in 2002 presidential election before being crushed by opponent Jacques Chirac.

But he was suspended from the party he founded -- expelled by his own daughter -- over his comments that the Holocaust was a "detail" of history.

The pair had a very public falling out, as Le Pen sought to take the party in a different direction, away from the anti-Semitism of the past.

Her stance put her firmly at odds with former president Jacques Chirac and current premier Francois Hollande, who have both apologized for the role played by French police in the rounding up of Jews at the Vel d'Hiv cycling track in Paris in July 1942.

It was a slip which allowed her rivals to gleefully remind the public of the National Front's hateful past -- a past Le Pen had attempted to consign to history, but which still lurks just beneath the surface.

Such a rush to condemn her will have come as little surprise to Le Pen -- her life has been played out in public, from childhood to becoming the country's most divisive political figure.

But much about her remains a mystery.

The first time I interviewed her, last October, I was made to wait in her office. The whole place was plastered with pictures of cats -- it turns out they're her passion.

There were photos of her children too. While waiting, I wondered if she ever discussed her political battles with them. Or perhaps they stick to talking about work or her everyday life -- something which remains a mystery to most.

I suspect one of the reasons she is so private is that there is a big difference between the public Marine Le Pen, who is familiar to most, and the woman behind the facade.

By the time she came in for that interview, we had rearranged much of her office to get the cameras in the right positions and the shot as we wanted it.

She was very relaxed, amiable from start to finish. Her message at the time was that the victory of Donald Trump would be a precursor to her own triumph.

She thought the populist wave would sweep her into the Élysée Palace. It appears such hopes may have been overly optimistic.

Most commentators agree that she has run a fairly lackluster campaign, citing her failure to widen her appeal beyond her natural electorate.

The fight of her life

It's a clever move, not only because it allows her to distance herself from a brand that will always find it difficult to be accepted by part of the electorate, but also because it recasts the second round as a battle between two independent candidates.

The move will remind voters that Macron too once had a party -- and if he can call himself an independent, then why can't she?

At our most recent meeting, I asked her, now that she knew she was facing Macron, what she thought of him.

"We know," I put to her, "all that you don't like about him, but is there anything that you do admire?"

"Nothing," she replied. "Nothing at all." From there she laid into him again.

I asked her what happened if she lost. Would she accept defeat? What would she do afterward?

I suggested that one of the key lessons of the campaign was that French voters have had enough of career politicians who have dominated the political scene for decades.

There was, beyond the possibility of corruption, the certainty of disconnection with normal people who have ordinary jobs.

She insisted she would not give up. Hers was, she said, the battle of an entire lifetime. It was her mission.

So, although she pretends to be an ordinary politician, she is far removed from such a definition.

She sees herself as a warrior -- fighting a battle that was started by her father. And now she's here to finish the job.</s>PARIS, April 28 (Reuters) - The man designated to replace French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen as head of the far-right National Front party has refused the job and will focus on defending himself against allegations he made questionable comments about the Holocaust, National Front member Louis Aliot said on Friday.

Aliot, Marine Le Pen's partner in private life, announced the decision in a television interview with BFM TV, saying Jean-Francois Jalkh, a hitherto little-known vice-president of the party, did not want to take up the post in the current climate.

Days from the May 7 presidential ballot where Marine Le Pen faces off against Emmanuel Macron, Alio said Jalkh would file a legal complaint over what he called totally unfounded accusations of ambiguous stances on the mass killing of Jews during World War Two.
Jean-François Jalkh, who replaced current presidential finalist Marine Le Pen as leader of the National Front, steps down from this role after three days following the reemergence of his comments questioning the logistics of Holocaust extermination camps, and is replaced by Steeve Briois.