Anti-Semitism is poison
Macron angry about desecration of Jewish graves
November 16, 2023, 3:17 p.m
Last week, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in France against anti-Semitic incidents. Nevertheless, the country has recorded a significant increase in anti-Semitic crimes since the outbreak of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Now even Jewish graves are being desecrated.
The desecration of ten Jewish graves at a German military cemetery in France has caused consternation. The German War Graves Commission, which looks after the graves of German war dead, condemned the act in the strongest possible terms. It is the first time that something like this has happened in a German military cemetery, said Alexandre de Bordelius from the Volksbund. In 2018 and 2019, graves in Jewish cemeteries in Alsace were desecrated several times.
Ten desecrated Jewish graves were discovered on Wednesday at the German military cemetery in Moulin-sous-Touvent in northern France. Some of the gravestones of German soldiers from the First World War were broken, knocked over or removed several meters from the gravesite. “The Jewish graves were not in a separate area, but rather scattered throughout the cemetery,” explained de Bordelius. A total of 1,903 German soldiers from the First World War are buried there.
Macron: Anti-Semitism is poison for society
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “deeply shocked”. “Such hateful acts cannot be justified,” he said on Wednesday evening on the sidelines of his state visit to Switzerland. He reiterated his call to “fight against all forms of anti-Semitism.” This is a “poison that endangers our unity,” he added.
The town’s mayor, Anne Brocvielle, assumes that the perpetrators were well prepared. “They were obviously full of anger,” she told broadcaster BFM. The public prosecutor’s office had already started investigations the day before.
Preservation of Jewish sites threatened by Israel-Palestine conflict
According to the Volksbund, the cemetery was created by the French authorities in 1920 to accommodate German war dead from scattered field graves. Moulin-sous-Touvent and the surrounding towns were among the areas that were particularly hotly contested in the first and last year of the war. Most of those buried there died during the major battles and numerous skirmishes in 1918.
At the end of the 1960s, young volunteers, including from Bremen, took part in the design of the cemetery. All of the dead are buried in individual graves; only six of them remain nameless. After 1971 the wooden crosses were replaced by metal crosses. The ten Jewish soldiers each received a stele made of natural stone with the words “Buried here rests…” written on it in Hebrew.
According to the Interior Ministry, more than 1,500 anti-Semitic crimes have been registered in France since the war between Israel and the radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas began in early October. This is more than three times as many as in the entire previous year. About half of these are graffitied slogans or swastikas, two percent involve acts of violence and injuries. In total, around 1,800 anti-Semitic acts have been recorded in France since the beginning of the year.