Hundreds of tombs defaced in French Jewish cemetery: minister

Several hundred tombs have been defaced at a Jewish cemetery in the northeast of France. Local media reported that about 200 grave stones were knocked down, and a monument to Holocaust victims was damaged. News of the latest incident comes just over a month after an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jews in a kosher supermarket siege in Paris and less than 24 hours after a fatal shooting at a synagogue in Copenhagen.

The country will not tolerate this new injury which goes against the values that all French people share. Every effort will be made to identify, question and bring to justice the person or persons responsible for this despicable act.

Bernard Cazeneuve, France’s Interior Minister

It is not the first time that a Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union has been targeted. In 1988, around 60 Jewish steles, stone or wooden slabs often used for commemorative purposes, were knocked over, and 54 tombs were wrecked in 2001.

I am fed up of all these anti-Semitic acts, in their different forms that we saw on January 9 in France, yesterday in Copenhagen and today in Alsace.

Roger Cukierman, President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France

Europe Tombs Defaced