France: Anti-Semitic sign at the memorial for murdered Jewish women

A postcard campaign demanding justice for Sarah Halimi and addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron. Photo: courtesy of the Israelite Consistoire of Haut-Rhin

JNS.org – A memorial garden in Nogent-sur-Marne, France, dedicated to two victims of gruesome anti-Semitic murders in Paris in 2017 and 2018 respectively, has been defaced with a swastika.

The city's mayor, Jacques Martin, strongly condemned the act, calling it “vandalism” and declaring that “hatred has no place in Nogent.”

The municipality immediately removed the anti-Semitic sticker and provided video recordings from the area to investigators.

The garden, which will be inaugurated in November 2022, has a special significance for the community.

Sarah Halimi, born in Nogent-sur-Marne in November 1951, spent about 30 years of her life there as the director of a kindergarten before she was tragically murdered in Paris.

The mayor stressed that Nogent-sur-Marne has so far been spared from the nationwide rise in anti-Semitism in recent months.

He said he was determined not to allow such behavior in his city, declaring that ignorance and hatred would not be tolerated. He reiterated the city's determination to preserve the memory of Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll and to refuse to watch them being “murdered a second time.”

In April 2021, France's Supreme Court ruled that Halimi's killer was criminally irresponsible. At the call of civic groups and representatives of the Jewish community, 25,000 people gathered across France on April 25, 2021 to protest the fact that there was no trial following the murder.

Halimi, 65, was beaten to death in her Paris apartment before being thrown out of the window by her 27-year-old neighbor while shouting “Allah Akbar” (“God is greatest” in Arabic).

Mireille Knoll, who fled Paris in 1942 to escape the Vel d'Hiv raid, was stabbed eleven times and her body burned.

Her two killers were convicted in 2021 – one was acquitted of murder but sentenced to 15 years in prison for theft, the other was sentenced to life imprisonment with 22 years' security for murder, with the aggravating circumstance that the victim belonged to the Jewish community.