Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Thousands Mourn Paris Kosher Grocery Victims at Vigil — Israeli Anthem Sung

Several thousand people came out Saturday evening to commemorate the victims of Friday’s deadly shooting at a kosher supermarket.

The vigil Saturday featured spontaneous singing of the French and Israeli anthems outside Hyper Cacher — the shop where a self-described Islamist killed four and held more than 20 hostage, before police broke in and killed him. The shooting came two days after two gunmen stormed the offices of the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people.

On Sunday, French President Francois Hollande and his prime minister, Manual Valls, are expected to attend a massive march through the center of Paris to commemorate the victims of those attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are among several foreign leaders who confirmed their attendance at the march, the Israeli embassy in Paris announced Saturday. Press reports have said that more than 1 million people are expected.

The vigil outside Hyper Cacher, which was attended also by French Interior Minister Bernasrd Cazeneuve and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, was preceded by a ceremony at the city hall of St. Mande, a heavily Jewish suburb adjacent to the supermarket.

Speaking at the ceremony in St. Mande, Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF — France’s umbrella group of Jewish communities — said he hoped a million people would attend the march. The ceremony was attended by the municipality’s entire city council.

“Your presence here is a real solace,” he told the hundreds of people who attended the ceremony in city hall. “It shows that France remains strong and able to resist the murderers who seek to change our lives – jihadist who attacked the freedom of expression, journalists and Jews – and this after earlier attacks on those they call infidels, including Muslims who, numerically, are probably the main victims of this jihadism.”

The attack on the kosher supermarket was perpetrated by Amedy Coulibaly, a 32-year-old Islamist who was part of the cell of brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo attack on Jan. 7. Police surrounded a printing shop north of Paris where they were holed up, before breaking in and killing them Friday.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.