France’s far-right National Front president Marine Le Pen, center, surrounded by supporters, sings the French National Anthem after her speech at Opera Plaza during the annual May Day march, in Paris, May 1, 2015. (photo credit: AP Photo/Francois Mori)
A French mayor closed down an exhibition on the Holocaust at the urging of far-right politicians from the National Front party, who said it constituted illicit campaigning near a ballot on elections day.
Gilbert Lorho, the mayor of the town of Ploeren, which is located approximately 280 miles west of Paris, ordered the closure of the exhibition on police officers who saved Jews during the Holocaust 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.
Bertrand Iragne, a local activist for National Front, requested the exposition be shuttered because of its proximity to a ballot, he told Marianne magazine in an interview on the affair published Tuesday. This, he said, violated laws on the political neutrality of voting stations.
French far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen addresses supporters during an election campaign rally in Nice, southern France, Thursday April 27, 2017. (Claude Paris/AP)
Asked how an exhibition on the Holocaust did this, he replied: ”The media has 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.
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He added that generally speaking he “welcomes” an exhibition on the Holocaust. But the exhibition also featured pictured of Simone Veil, a Jewish French politician who served under the socialist former president François Mitterrand.
Lorho told Marianne he ordered the temporary shuttering of the exhibition to “avoid unnecessary conflict” during the election.
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