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ANTI-SEMITISM

Le Pen to join Paris march against anti-Semitism despite Jewish opposition

National Front leader Marine Le Pen and several other far right politicians will ignore the wishes of Jewish organisations and join Wednesday's march through Paris against anti-Semitism following the brutal murder of an elderly Jewish woman.

Published: 28 March 2018 16:49 CEST
Le Pen to join Paris march against anti-Semitism despite Jewish opposition
Photo: AFP

Mourners are to gather in Paris on Wednesday for a silent march to condemn the gruesome killing of 85-year-old Jewish woman Mireille Knoll, the latest of several anti-Semitic attacks that have rattled France's Jewish community.

They will be joined by National Front leader Marine Le Pen and several other members of her party despite Jewish organisations specifically asking her to stay away.

Francis Kalifat of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organisations said Le Pen and her party were “not wanted” at the march on Wednesday afternoon.

“I explained very clearly that the over-representation of anti-Semites on the extreme left and the far right makes these two parties indefensible,” said Kalifat.

“Marine Le Pen, MPs and elected officials from the National Front as well as a number of party activists, who have been touched by this horrific murder will participate in the memorial march for Mireille Knoll,” read a statement from the National Front. 

The National Front says its decision to ignore the wishes of CRIF was down to the fact the murdered woman's son Daniel Knoll went against the organisation's stance.

Marine Le Pen's father Jean-Marie Le Pen who founded the National Front has been convicted of Holocaust denial and hate speech on several occasions as have several party members. Marine Le Pen has tried to soften the party's image in recent years in a bid to rid the National Front of its image as a racist, anti-Semitic party.

(Sarah Halimi, 65 and Mireille Knoll, 85, both murdered in the 11th arrondissement of Paris in what are believed to be anti-Semitic killings.)

Mireille Knoll, who escaped the notorious Vel d'Hiv roundup and deportation of Jews from Paris during World War II, was found dead in her bed in her small apartment in eastern Paris last Friday by firefighters called to extinguish a blaze.

In April last year Marine Le Pen angered many when she said “I don't think France is responsible for the Vel d'Hiv” despite the fact that no German officers were present.

Le Monde newspaper said The National Front (FN) leader had “crossed a red line” while Jewish groups blasted the comments as “revisionist” and an “insult to France (which has faced up to) its history without a selective memory.”

The CRIF has also asked representatives of the far-left group France Insoumis to stay away but their leader Jean-Luc Melenchon will also deft the request to take part in the march, reports claim.

READ ALSO:

VIDEO: Despite her efforts Jewish voters still fear Marine Le Pen

VIDEO: Despite her efforts, Jewish voters in France still fear Marine Le Pen

Police arrested a neighbour and another suspect who have been charged.

Investigators are working on the theory that Knoll's killers stabbed her, robbed her and set her body on fire because she was a Jew.

“The terrible thing is that one of the attackers told the other: 'She's a Jew, she must have money',” Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told parliament on Tuesday.

“There are stereotypes we have to fight.”

Several leading politicians including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo have said they will attend the march from 18: 30 Paris time making their way from Place de la Nation to Knoll's home in the city's east.

Parliamentary proceedings will be suspended to allow politicians to join the march, a joint statement from the National Assembly and the presidents of parliamentary groups said.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe also plans to meet with Knoll's family on Wednesday.

The death of the frail octogenarian — she was suffering from Parkinson's disease, one of her sons said — has shocked France's Jewish community, coming a year after an Orthodox Jewish woman in her sixties was thrown out the window of her Paris flat by a neighbour shouting “Allahu Akhbar” (God is greatest).

A judge confirmed just last month that the April 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi was motivated by anti-Semitism, a delay that drew the ire of several Jewish groups.

Halimi's murder reignited the debate over anti-Semitism in working-class districts in France, where Jews have been targeted in several deadly jihadist attacks in recent years.

France's half-a-million-plus Jewish community is the largest in Europe but has been hit by a wave of emigration to Israel in the past two decades, partly due to the emergence of a virulent strain of anti-Semitism in predominantly immigrant neighbourhoods.

In 2012, an Islamist gunman shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse.

Three years later, an associate of the two brothers who massacred a group of cartoonists at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo killed four people in a hostage-taking at a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

POLICE

Outrage in Germany after remains of neo-Nazi buried in empty Jewish grave

The burial of a known neo-Nazi's ashes in the former grave of a Jewish musical scholar has sparked outrage in Germany, and prompted Berlin's anti-Semitism official to file a criminal complaint.

Published: 13 October 2021 12:35 CEST
Jewish scholar Max Friedlaender's grave stone in Stahnsdorf, just outside Berlin, on October 12th.
Jewish scholar Max Friedlaender's grave stone in Stahnsdorf, just outside Berlin, on October 12th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Jens Kalaene

The remains of the neo-Nazi were buried at the grave of Max Friedlaender in Stahnsdorf, just outside Berlin, with several figures from the extreme-right scene in attendance at the funeral on Friday.

Samuel Salzborn, anti-Semitism official for Berlin, said late Tuesday that he had filed a criminal complaint because “the intention here is obvious – the right-wing extremists deliberately chose a Jewish grave to disturb the peace of the dead by burying a Holocaust denier there”.

He added that “it must now be quickly examined how quickly the Holocaust denier can be reburied in order to no longer disturb the dignified memory of Max Friedlaender”.

Friedlaender died in 1934 – when Adolf Hitler was already in power – and was buried in the graveyard as his religion was given as ‘Protestant’ in the burial registration slip

His grave was cleared upon expiration in 1980 and opened up for new burials, under common practice for plots after a certain amount of time has passed.

Friedlaender’s gravestone however remains standing as the entire cemetery is protected under monument conservative rules.

‘Mistake’

The Protestant Church managing the graveyard voiced dismay at the incident.

In a statement, it said it had accepted the request for burial at the empty grave because “everyone has a right for a final resting place”.

“Nevertheless, the choice of the former grave of Max Friedlaender is a mistake. We are looking into this mistake now,” the church said in a statement.

At the funeral, a black cloth was laid over Friedlaender’s tombstone while wreathes and ribbons bearing the Nazi-era iron cross symbol were laid on the grave for the neo-Nazi Henry Hafenmayer.

Prominent Holocaust denier Horst Mahler, who has been convicted for incitement, was among dozens at the funeral.

Police deployed at the funeral were able to arrest a fugitive from the far-right scene there, German media reported.

Several war graves stand at the cemetery at Stahnsdorf, and these sites are known in far-right circles, the Protestant church administrating the graveyard admitted.

It added that it has worked closely with police to hinder several neo-Nazi marches there in recent years.

READ ALSO: German hotel workers probed after singer’s anti-Semitism complaint

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