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Le Pen challenges 'gas chamber' myth again

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will deny to the death your right to say it."
— Paraphrase of the famous quotation for the modern French Republic

Le Pen reiterates previous statement over gas chambers
European Jewish Press Friday, 25 April 2008

JEAN-MARIE Le PEN—The head of France's National Front is in hot water again for saying that he does not believe in the "gas chamber" myth. The former French paratrooper was convicted earlier this year for stating that the German occupation of his country during World War II was "not especially inhumane."

PARIS — The president of the National Front, who has been convicted of racism or anti-Semitism on several occasions, said in an interview with a regional monthly magazine that for him it is "so obvious that gas chambers were a detail of the history of WWII."

When Le Pen mentioned that "50 million people have died in WWII," the journalist questioned him about the fact that people were deported to the death camps only to be killed.
"This is because you believe in this story. I don’t feel an obligation to adhere to such a version. I observe that in Auschwitz there was the IG Farben factory where 80,000 people worked. These workers as far as I know weren’t gassed nor burned to death," Le Pen replied.

The journalist then stressed that works by various historians show the reality of the deportation and the extermination. "This is not the problem, I didn’t disputed it but I said it was a detail. Was this worth to be fined 150 million? " Le Pen asked in a reference to his condemnation by a court after using the term detail for the first time in 1987. He was convicted and fined in 1990 for inciting racial hatred.

Le Pen: Sentenced earlier for 'humane' remarks

Le Pen said Friday that he had “prohibited” the publication of the interview in Bretons, a magazine published in the Britany region. Earlier this year, Le Pen appeared in court on a charge of denying a crime against humanity and condoning war crimes over his comments made in an extreme-right magazine in 2005 that the Nazi occupation of France in WWII was "not especially inhumane."
In the interview he said: "If the Germans had carried out mass executions across the country, as the received wisdom would have it, then there wouldn't have been any need for concentration camps for political deportees." He was handed a three-month suspended jail sentence.

In 2002 Le Pen shocked Europe by making it through to the second round of France's presidential election.
But in the 2007 presidential election, his party was on its knees after [Jewish president] Sarkozy wooed away its voters by borrowing themes such as national identity.