French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has come under fire from her rivals in the presidential election, as well as French Jewish groups and Israel Monday after saying France was not responsible for a mass round-up of Jews for deportation during World War II.
The row appeared to mark a blow to Le Pen's painstaking attempts to moderate her National Front party's image.
Her "de-demonisation" efforts have helped bring her to joint first place in the opinion polls ahead of this month's first round of voting.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Le Pen's remarks about the July 16, 1942 round-up by French police of more than 13,000 foreign Jews, most of whom were deported to German death camps and never returned.
Le Pen's main rival for the presidency, centrist Emmanuel Macron, said that she had "shown the true face of the French extreme right" with "a grave political and historical error".
Conservative hopeful Francois Fillon meanwhile charged that the National Front still counted in its ranks "many who are nostalgic for the Vichy regime", which collaborated with German occupying forces during the war.
Le Pen had been asked during a television interview on Sunday if former president Jacques Chirac was wrong when, in 1995, he acknowledged France's responsibility for the round-up, carried out by the collaborationist authorities at the behest of Germany.
Thousands of the victims were interned in squalid conditions at Paris's Vel d'Hiv cycling track before being put on trains to Auschwitz.
The National Front leader replied that "if someone was responsible, it was those who were in power at the time. It was not France."
She argued that French children were being taught to see only the darkest parts of their country's history. "I want us to be proud of being French again," she asserted.
Le Pen is neck-and-neck with Macron ahead of the first round of the election, set for April 23. Polls suggest she is likely to lose out in the decisive second round on May 7.
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