In July 2017, Mélenchon maintained that Republican France bears no guilt in the Holocaust, and criticized Emmanuel Macron for admitting at a gathering in Paris remembering the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup that Vichy France was the legal French government at the time, thus conceding the French State's responsibility in the deportation of the Jews. Mélenchon's comments were echoing those of former President of France Mitterrand who declared in 1994 that the roundup and deportation of Jews to death camps during the war was the work of the country's Nazi occupiers and "Vichy France," an illegitimate entity distinct from France. "Haaretz" noted that Marine Le Pen had made comments similar to Mélenchon's three months earlier.