In hint at Le Pen, Rivlin says Israel can’t cooperate with Europeans who deny Holocaust role

Without mentioning names, President Reuven Rivlin criticizes French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and other European politicians for rejecting their respective countries’ responsibility for having collaborated with the Nazi regime.

This new kind of Holocaust denial is more dangerous than the mere refusal to acknowledge that the mass murder on Jews had taken place, the president says, speaking at a ceremony to mark the end of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Le Pen, who came second in the first round the French presidential elections yesterday, recently tried to deny that the French state was responsible for the wartime round-up of Jews at a Paris cycling track who were then sent to Nazi death camps.

Former President Jacques Chirac and current leader Francois Hollande have both apologized for the role French police played in the round-up of more than 13,000 Jews at the Vel d’Hiv cycling track that was ordered by Nazi officers in 1942.

Rivlin also warns Israel against cooperating with extremist parties on the continent, again not naming, but clearly referring to Le Pen.

“As a sovereign state that has gained national independence, we have a duty to demand from other nations and states that they not evade responsibility,” Rivlin says.

“It is our promise to the blood of our brothers and sisters that cries out to us from the earth, this is our commitment to future generations,” the president adds.

“We must wage a war against the current and dangerous wave of Holocaust denial. We must resist the renunciation of national responsibility in the name of alleged victimhood.”

— Raphael Ahren