THE FRENCH government yesterday promised to hunt down the vandals who scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on the country’s chief Holocaust monument.
Large, black swastikas were painted on the memorial at Drancy, the site of the second World War deportation camp from where tens of thousands of Jews were sent to their deaths.
Local authorities said one of the people behind the defacement was captured on surveillance cameras and was believed to be a man in his 20s “of European origin”.
The train carriage that was once used by the Nazis for deportations, and a stone pillar, were daubed with swastikas. Shopfronts in the towns of Drancy and Bobigny were also attacked, police said.
The interior minister, Michelle Alliot-Marie, said: “Everything is being done to identify those responsible for these unspeakable acts and to bring them to justice.”
The vandalism, in the middle of the Passover celebrations, sparked anger among France's Jewish population. The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions said such acts indicated a prejudice "deeply engrained" in French society. – ( Guardianservice)