PARIS (JTA) — Large black swastikas were painted on a French Holocaust memorial.
A video surveillance camera late Friday night caught a young, “European”-looking man drawing swastikas on the wagon commemorating more than 70,000 Jews detained in the northern Paris town of Drancy, and deported to Nazi death camps during World War II, according to French reports.
The French Jewish community and the Ministry of the Interior strongly condemned the crime in separate statements.
The perpetrators “wanted to spit on Jews deported to Drancy,” said the CRIF Jewish umbrella group in a statement released Sunday. “They also wanted to insult Jews who celebrate Passover” and “all of France,” the statement said.
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie promised that “every means” was being used to find those responsible.
Drancy city officials said the memorial had “unfortunately” fallen victim to vandalism in the past, the French news agency AFP reported.
By the next morning the memorial, which includes a World War II-era wagon and a large stone plaque and statue, was repainted and cleaned, the daily Le Parisien reported.
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