Anti-Semitism, xenophobia on the rise warns Macron on visit to French camp

French President Emmanuel Macron says it’s time to “open our eyes” to resurgent anti-Semitism and xenophobia during a visit to a deportation camp in the south of France, where the authorities rounded up Jews before and during World War II. 

French President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the "crimes of the French state" at the Camp des Milles memorial in Aix-en-Provence, Monday 5 December 2022 © 20Minutes/Christophe Simon

Some 10,000 people of 38 nationalities were interned at the Camp des Milles on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence, and more than 2,000 were deported to Auschwitz, according to camp historians.

The roundups began in 1939, nearly a year before Nazis occupied northern and western France, and installed a puppet-administration over the rest of the country based in Vichy under Marechal Pétain.

Speaking on Monday, Macron underlined that the Camp des Milles “is not an accident of history, but the fruit of a deliberate slide” toward genocide rooted in historic French anti-Semitism and the “slow erosion of the republican spirit.”

“Here, at the Camp des Milles, France was what it should never again become,” he said, calling for his country to be “the voice of humanism” instead.

EN DIRECT | Discours du Président @EmmanuelMacron à l’occasion du dixième anniversaire de l’ouverture au public du site-mémorial du camp des Milles, où 10000 personnes juives furent internées sous le régime de Vichy. https://t.co/URMlpRYOKV

— Élysée (@Elysee) December 5, 2022

Warning against 'ideologies of division'

The camp is now a memorial site that includes more than 400 illustrations and murals painted on the walls by artists and intellectuals who were once interned there, including the artist Max Ernst.

Visitors can see where the internees slept, or managed to hide, and walk the path they took to deportation convoys.

“Let us open our eyes to the rise of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, tune our ear to the resurgence of racism. Let us never be fooled by the new clothing adopted by the same ideologies of division,” Macron said.

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French far-right on the rise

The French Interior Ministry has reported a rise in the number of acts of vandalism, public insults and other infractions based on race or religion over the last year.

Macron faced two far-right challengers in this year's presidential election and the far-right National Rally party won a record number of seats in the lower house of parliament, while Macron’s centrists lost their absolute majority. 

National Rally's presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has sought to distance the party from anti-Semitic views espoused by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, shifting the party's focus to immigration and Muslim practices it sees as a threat to France's identity.