National Front Got French Mayor To Close Holocaust Exhibit During Election
(JTA) — A French mayor closed down an exhibition on the Holocaust at the urging of politicians from the far-right National Front party, who said it constituted illicit campaigning on election day.
The mayor of Ploeren, Gilbert Lorho, ordered the closure of the exhibition on May 7, the day when millions of Frenchmen participated in the final round of the presidential elections.
Emmanuel Macron, a centrist candidate, handily won the runoff against National Front President Marine Le Pen.
A local activist for National Front, Bertrand Iragne, requested the exposition be shuttered because of its proximity to a ballot, he told the publication Marianne in an interview on Tuesday. This, he said, violated laws on the political neutrality of voting stations.
Asked how an exhibition on the Holocaust did this, he replied: ”The media have circulated the idea that we are the new Nazis,” he said of his party, which was founded by the Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is Marine Le Pen’s father and has multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred of Jews.
Lorho told Marianne he ordered the temporary shuttering of the exhibition to “avoid unnecessary conflict” during the election.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO