Wiesenthal Centre Commends French Minister of the Interior for Visit to Desecrated Jewish Cemetery near Strasbourg

December 16, 2018

“The perpetrators were the most cowardly of hatemongers, to come like thieves in the night to attack the dead”... "It is a sad reality that it is mainly Jewish graveyards that are targets, by the extreme right but increasingly by Islamist radical youth".



"In the antisemitic context of the continuing Saturday 'Yellow Tunic' demonstrations across France, Friday’s desecration of 50 gravestones and a Holocaust monument in Herrlisheim, north of Strasbourg, was one more stab in the collective consciousness of French Jews..."

This 18th century cemetery had survived the Nazis, who took back this Alsace region into the German Reich throughout World War II,” stated the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels.

Samuels’ own grandparents’ tomb had been destroyed among 25% of the graves in a British Jewish cemetery. On that occasion, he had commented that “the perpetrators were the most cowardly of hatemongers, to come like thieves in the night to attack the dead”... "It is a sad reality that it is mainly Jewish graveyards that are targets, mainly by the extreme right but increasingly by Islamist radical youth," he added.

The Centre commended the newly appointed Minister of the Interior, Cristophe Castaner: “Only last week, we had turned to the Minister to seek his application of the European Union’s manifesto on antisemitism, to impose harsh penalties on anti-Jewish hate and violence. His visit to the desecrated cemetery was an important step, but the arrest of those responsible is as vital as the police capture and shooting of the nearby Strasbourg Christmas market Jihadist assassin killing shoppers to the cry of 'Allahu Akbar',” concluded Samuels.

For further information, contact Shimon Samuels at +33 147 237 637, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.
 
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).