French govt decries its Nazi past

Macron calls for Israeli-Palestinian talks in favor of two-state solution

PARIS - French President Emmanuel Macron denounced France's collaboration in the Holocaust, lashing out on Sunday at those who negate or minimize the country's role in sending tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths.

After he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a Holocaust commemoration, Macron also called on Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to resume stranded peace talks based on a two-state solution. He said that Israelis and Palestinians should be able to live in recognized, secure borders.

"This has been the constant line of French diplomacy and I'm very attached to this. In this regard, France is prepared to support all diplomatic efforts on the basis of the peace parameters recognized by the international community," he said.

Commemorating 75 years since a mass roundup of Jews during the darkest chapter of modern French history, Macron insisted that "it was indeed France that organized this".

"Not a single German" was directly involved, he said, but French police collaborating with the Nazis.

Holocaust survivors recounted wrenching stories at the ceremony at the site of Vel d'Hiv stadium outside Paris, where police herded some 13,000 people on July 16-17, 1942, before they were deported to camps. More than 4,000 were children. Fewer than 100 survived.

They were among some 76,000 Jews deported from France to Nazi camps.

It was a half-century later when then-president Jacques Chirac became the first French leader to acknowledge the state's role in the Holocaust's horrors.

Macron dismissed arguments by French far right leaders and others that the collaborationist Vichy government didn't represent France.

"It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. Yes, it's convenient, but it is false. We cannot build pride upon a lie."

Anti-Semitism

French Jewish leaders hailed Macron's speech on Sunday even as critics railed at him online, where renewed anti-Semitism has flourished. Macron pledged to fight such racism, and called for thorough investigation into the recent killing of a Parisian woman believed linked to anti-Jewish sentiment.

Netanyahu said that "recently we have witnessed a rise of extremist forces that seek to destroy not only the Jews, but of course the Jewish state as well, but well beyond that. ... The zealots of militant Islam, who seek to destroy you, seek to destroy us as well. We must stand against them together."

Pro-Palestinian activists protested Netanyahu's appearance in Paris, criticizing Jewish settlement policy and the blockade of Gaza.

Macron condemned an attack last week that killed two Israeli police officers at a Jerusalem shrine revered by Jews and Muslims, and said he is committed to Israel's security but warned that continued Jewish settlement construction threatens peace efforts.

Ap - Xinhua