Among his stage props was a model of the Eiffel Tower, which he exploded to symbolise the end of the exhibition hall in which he stood. A fire destroyed part of the Vélodrome d'Hiver in 1959 and the rest of the structure was demolished. A block of flats and a building belonging to the Ministry of the Interior now stand on the site. For decades the French government declined to apologize for the role of French policemen in the round-up or for any other state complicity. It was argued (by de Gaulle and others) that the French Republic had been dismantled when Philippe Pétain instituted a new French State during the war and that the Republic had been re-established after the war had ended. It was not for the Republic, therefore, to apologise for events that happened while it had not existed and which had been carried out by a state which it did not recognise. For example, former President François Mitterrand had maintained this position. The claim was more recently reiterated by Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front Party, during the 2017 election campaign. On 16 July 1995, then President, Jacques Chirac, stated that it was time that France faced up to its past and he acknowledged the role that the state had played in the persecution of Jews and other victims of the German occupation. Those responsible for the round-up, according to Chirac, were "" ("450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis"). To mark the 70th anniversary of the round-up, then President François Hollande gave a speech at a monument of the Vel' d'Hiv' round-up on 22 July 2012. The president recognized that this event was a crime committed "in France, by France," and emphasized that the deportations in which French police participated were offences committed against French values, principles, and ideals. He continued his speech by remarking that the Republic would clamp down on anti-Semitism "with the greatest determination". The first official admission that the French State had been complicit in the deportation of 76,000 Jews during WW II was made in 1995 by then President Jacques Chirac, at the site of the Vélodrome d'Hiver where 13,000 Jews had been rounded up for deportation to death camps in July 1942. "," he said ("France, on that day [16 July 1942], committed the irreparable. Breaking its word, it handed those who were under its protection over to their executioners"). "" ("the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state").