Jean-Luc Mélenchon. (Screengrab: La France Insoumise/YouTube)

Paris (CNSNews.com) – Jewish community leaders in France say a far left-wing politician’s rejection of President Emmanuel Macron’s comments about French responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II mirrors that of the country’s far right.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the leftist movement Rebellious France disputed Macron’s remarks this week, saying that the wartime Vichy regime which collaborated with the Nazis did not represent “France.”

“France is nothing but its Republic,” Mélenchon wrote on his blog the day after Macron’s comments, adding that “at that time the Republic was in London.”

(The “Free French” government-in-exile, based in London, was led by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, while Marshal Philippe Pétain headed the Vichy regime.)

“Everywhere in the country, Frenchmen were fighting the Nazi occupier,” asserted Mélenchon, who ran a strong presidential campaign in elections won by Macron in May.

Francis Kalifat, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Organizations, said ON THURSDAY (?) he believed Mélechon resented Macron’s election victory.

Reached by phone, Kalifat said it was interesting that Mélechon’s views on French responsibility for the wartime deportation were the same as the far right National Front.

“Finally the extremes meet, as the National Front also criticizes recognition of the responsibility of France in the Vel d’Hiv round-up,” he said.

Under orders from the Nazis, 4,500 French security officials over two days in July 1942 arrested more than 13,000 Jews in Paris and the region, including 4,000 children, to be sent to Nazi concentration camps. The Jews were held at a Paris cycling stadium, Vel d’Hiv, before being transported. Only a handful survived the Holocaust.

Macron this week marked the 75th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv raid, along with invited guest Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu

“I repeat it here, it is indeed France which organized the round-up and then the deportation and therefore, the deaths of almost all of the 13,152 people of Jewish confession taken away on July 16 and 17 from their home,” he said.

“Those two days of July 1942 were the work of the French police, not a single German participated in it,” Macron added.

“France, by acknowledging its faults, paved the way for their reparation. It is its greatness, it is the sign of a living nation.”

“This invitation to commemorate together, hand-in-hand, is a very strong gesture,” Netanyahu responded. “To the country of France, to all the French people, from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you.”

Netanyahu also praised the “special heroism” represented by the French resistance, and those French citizens who at the risk of their own lives helped to save thousands more Jews.

It was the first time that such a senior Israeli had been invited to the Vel d’Hiv commemorations, and Mélenchon was among those who criticized Macron for doing so.

The communist party also rejected the invitation, saying in a statement that Netanyahu’s presence “does not carry a message of peace.”

Kalifat noted that Israeli ambassadors have been invited to past ceremonies, and it was “quite normal” for the prime minister to have been invited to the one marking the 75th anniversary.

The French Jewish Union for Peace, an anti-Zionist group, also criticized the invitation, saying that “the Israeli government usurps the memory of the victims of Nazism to make believe that Israel would represent the Jews of the whole world.”

During this year’s election campaign, National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen also made controversial remarks about the wartime round-up, saying in a television interview that “those who were running the country” were responsible, not “France.”

“I want our children to be proud of being French again because we have taught them a lot of reasons to criticize their country,” she said at the time. “They only see its darkest historical aspects.”

After Macron’s statements this week, Le Pen did not comment publicly.

But Damien Philippot, a National Front candidate in this year’s legislative elections – and brother of the party’s deputy leader – tweeted, “Macron’s insistence on humiliating France is a matter of concern. Let us remain proud, proclaim our love for France!”

A French leader first recognized French responsibility for the Jewish round-up in 1995, when President Jacques Chirac did so in a speech on the 53rd anniversary. Former President François Hollande followed suit in 2012, saying that “This crime was committed in France, by France.”

(Patrick Goodenough contributed to this story)