Hundreds of Jewish Tombs Desecrated in France

Image by Getty Images
Several hundred Jewish tombs have been damaged in a cemetery near the northeastern French city of Strasbourg, the French interior minister said on Sunday.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve condemned the incident, which took place at the Jewish cemetery of Sarre-Union near the German border, and said in a statement that police had opened an inquiry.
“Everything will be done to identify, arrest and judge the perpetrator or perpetrators of this ignominious act,” Cazeneuve said.
News of the desecrated graves came a day after a deadly shooting at a Denmark synagogue, which resembled an attack at a Jewish supermarket in Paris during three days of violence in January.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said such attacks would likely continue and Israel would welcome European Jews who chose to move there.
France is home to western Europe’s biggest Jewish and Muslim communities.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
