Anti-Semitic vandalism was discovered on tombstones in the Jewish cemetery of Herrlisheim, in northeastern France, near the city of Strasbourg where two people were killed on Wednesday in a Christmas market shooting attack by an Islamist gunman.
Crif, the umbrella representative group of French Jewish institutions, denounced the cemetery desecration and called for Justice to sanction the authors.
Several tombs were tagged with swastikas, and inscriptions were written on the walls of the cemetery, among them “Crif = Zog” or “88,” a formula used by the neo-Nazi groups to designate Hitler. The Jewish cemetery is managed by the Jewish Consistory of the department of Bas-Rhin, which immediately filed a complaint.
Similar anti-Semitic and other racist marks have been discovered in recent weeks. This series of anti-Semitic tags began several months ago and targeted a number of elected officials, including the prefect of the Grand Est region, Jean-Luc Marx.
According to the results of a E.U. survey in 12 countries, nearly 90 percent of European Jews feel that anti-Semitism has increased in their home nations over the past five years, and almost 30 percent say they have been harassed at least once in the past year, reveals a major European Union report published on Monday.
Of the more than 16,000 Jews who participated in the online survey, 85 percent rated anti-Semitism the biggest social or political problem in the country where they live. Some 38 percent said they had considered emigrating because they did not feel safe as Jews.