Special Report - In France, the discreet charm of a far-right mayor

Mayoral candidate David Rachline of France's far-right National Front political party campaigns before the second round in the French mayoral elections in Frejus in this March 25, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/Files

FREJUS France (Reuters) - Last month, David Rachline, the mayor of the French Riviera town of Frejus, quietly loaned a free room to the town’s Jewish community to celebrate Yom Kippur.

In most other towns in France the gesture would have been unremarkable. But Rachline belongs to the far right National Front, a party whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was convicted of inciting racial hatred in 1996 when he said the gas chambers used to kill Jews in the Holocaust were "merely a detail” of World War Two.