Israel condemns Marine Le Pen for denying French responsibility for deporting Jews

Israel's Foreign Ministry on Monday said far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen "contradicted historical truth" when she said that her country was not responsible for the rounding up of Jews during the Holocaust.

Speaking about the Vel d'Hiv roundup, the Front National leader claimed the French were not to blame, adding: "If there are people responsible, it's those who were in power at the time".

"I don't think France is responsible for the Vel d'Hiv", she told RTL radio, referring to the Paris cycling stadium where 13,000 Jews were rounded up in July 1942 before being sent to Nazi death camps.

French hard-left presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, speaks during a campaign rally in Marseille's Old Port, southern France, Sunday, April 9, 2017.

Le Pen will face off against the other candidates in the first round of France's elections on April 23.

Former president Jacques Chirac formally acknowledged the state's role in Jewish persecution in 1995, a position maintained and approved by his successors Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande.

Out of the 150,000 Jews living in France, 76,000 were murdered after French authorities shipped them away.

"We must not be complacent or minimize what the National Front is today", Macron said.

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, on Sunday condemned Le Pen's remark as "revisionist", meaning an attempt to deny the Holocaust.

Her remark rolled back more than two decades of policy on France's responsibility in the darkest period of its modern history. Her popularity is due in part to her effort to distance herself from the extremist views that were the trademark of Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father and founder of the National Front party.

A self-described patriot, Le Pen hopes to extract France from the European Union and do away with France's membership in the shared euro currency.

"Le Pen, who wants to curb immigration, ditch the euro, and hold a referendum on European Union membership, was buoyed by Trump's victory and the British vote to leave the European Union past year, hoping a similar groundswell against what she calls "unchecked globalization (and) destructive ultra-liberalism" would propel her to victory", Reuters explained. "I want them to be proud of being French once more".

He says he wants France to pull out of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to avoid a confrontation with Russian Federation.

Opinion polls have consistently rated Macron as most likely to win the decisive, second-round run-off vote in May, although Citigroup cautioned that Macron's "En Marche!"

In what will also be familiar to American voters from Election 2016, the French political and media establishment is vocally anti-Le Pen. Of the rest of the candidates, the socialist Benoit Hamon experienced in recent days a notable setback and is below 10 percent, which leaves him practically out of the fight.