National Front leader Le Pen slammed for attending far-right ball in Austria
Two French organisations have condemned the leader of the far-right Front National party, Marine Le Pen, for attending a ball in Austria on Friday organised by an Austrian student fraternity, Wiener Korporationsring, with close links to the extreme right.
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Anti-racist group, SOS Racisme described the event as a “scandalous ball for people nostalgic for the Third Reich”. The organisation said her attendance was all the more shocking as it came on the 67th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Union for French Jewish Students said it was concerned by the lack of criticism of Le Pen for attending the ball.
“Just how far does Marine Le Pen have to go before civil and political societies react?” it asked.
Le Pen was the guest of the leader of the Austria’s extreme-right Freedom Party, Hans-Christian Strache.
On Friday, she met the president of the National Assembly Martin Graf, also a Freedom Party member, before dining with Strache and then heading to the ball at Vienna's imperial Hofburg palace.
Commemorative ceremonies were held around the world on Friday to mark the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi's Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland.
It is estimated that one million people - mostly Jews and non-Jewish Poles - were killed at the Nazi death camp.
Latest opinion polls give Le Pen between 17-20 per cent of the vote in the upcoming presidential election behind the Socialist candidate François Hollande with 30 per cent and Nicolas Sarkozy with 23 per cent.
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