French police suspect anti-Semitism motivated murder of Holocaust survivor
27 Mar 201813:06 PM
French police suspect anti-Semitism motivated murder of Holocaust survivor
Reuters
Two men arrested in France over the death of a Holocaust survivor are suspected of killing her because of her Jewish religion, a judicial source said on Tuesday.

Mireille Knoll, 85, was found dead on Friday at her apartment in Paris’s central 11th district. She had been stabbed multiple times and her flat set alight.

President Emmanuel Macron responded to her death by saying that he was determined to stamp out anti-Semitism in France, home to western Europe’s largest Jewish community.

The suspects were interrogated by police before being sent before a judge, who initiated a formal investigation into murder motivated by the real or supposed adherence to a religion, as well as aggravated theft and damage to property, the source said.

Under French law, being placed under formal investigation often - but not always - leads to people being sent to trial.

As a child in Paris, Knoll evaded the round-up of Jews during World War Two, Paris lawmaker Meyer Habib said. Thousands of Jews were taken to the Velodrome d’Hiver cycling track in 1942 and sent on to Nazi death camps.


France’s 400,000-strong community has complained for years of a rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes.


In 2015, vandals desecrated 250 tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France only days after four Jews were killed in an attack on a kosher grocery in Paris.


Knoll’s killing took place a year to the day after the murder of Sarah Halimi-Attal, a 65-year-old whose killing prosecutors believe was anti-Semitic.


France’s chief rabbi on Monday described Knoll’s death as a “horror” and Jewish leaders called for a march in her memory.

In a twitter message late on Monday night, Macron said: “I want to express my emotion after the horrific crime committed against Mme Knoll. I reaffirm my total determination in fighting anti-Semitism.”