The Simon Wiesenthal Center has sent a letter expressing its dismay to France's minister of armed services in the wake of a report in a French publication detailing the extent of neo-Nazi deep infiltration in the French military.
In a letter to Florence Parly, Minister of the French Armed Services, Simon Wiesenthal Center Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed “shock at a Mediapart report – just released – of neo-Nazi elements in the French Armed Forces.”
He wrote that “Mediapart claims the presence of ‘over 50 new devotees of the Third Reich'... illustrated by the horrific photos below, apparently both in barracks on French soil and on mission overseas.”
Some of the photos referred to show French soldiers posing with or wrapped in Nazi flags, some doing the Nazi salute, and some posing in front of a large black and white image of German soldiers during World War II doing the salute.
Mediapart reported that “this is not the first case, but recurrent" which the Wiesenthal Center found shocking.
“Madam Minister, our Centre expects immediate and appropriate action by your Ministry to bring these elements to justice, before they infect further military ranks with their hatred and probable incitement to violence against Jews and other targets,” said Samuels, concluding his letter.
The Mediapart investigation found that dozens of French soldiers in the army openly displayed neo-Nazi sympathies. In the months long investigation, they found over 50 soldiers who harbored nostalgic feelings for Nazi era.
There were instances of soldiers filming each other in Nazi reenactments. The online site wrote that soldiers "displayed their convictions inside their homes, barracks or during missions carried out by the French army."
In one egregious example, a French soldier was captured in French Guyana teaching four young boys to perform the Nazi salute while yelling the Nazi slogan, "Sieg Heil."
The investigation found 14 regiments of the French army had neo-Nazi factions. They also warned that this could be "just the tip of the iceberg" as they were not able to interview that many soldiers, mostly using online resources such as social media, where many of the photos had been made public.
The French Ministry of the Armed Forces said that "the concerns raised by the investigation of Mediapart are very serious."