NEW YORK (JTA) — American Jewish organizations paused to remember Mireille Knoll, the French Holocaust survivor found murdered in her Paris apartment.
The American Jewish Committee held a ceremony at its New York office Thursday attended by French Consul General Anne-Claire Legendre, Israeli Consul General Dani Dayan and diplomats from 10 European countries and South Korea.
“Mireille Knoll’s murder haunts me. It is a painful reminder of the face of anti-Semitism in France today,” said the Paris-based AJC Europe director, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, who addressed the event by video.
The World Jewish Congress held a similar event at its New York headquarters on Thursday, which Legendre also attended.
“We must continue to sound the alarm again and again until we put a stop to this terrifying rise of anti-Semitism spreading today across France and all of Europe,” WJC President Ronald Lauder said, according to a statement.
Knoll, 85, who escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp when French police rounded up Jews in Paris in 1942, was stabbed 11 times before her apartment was set ablaze by the perpetrators on March 23, police say. A Muslim neighbor and his alleged accomplice have been charged with murder and hate crimes.
Her killing led to widespread outrage in France. President Emmanuel Macron attended her funeral and at least 10,000 people, including many Jews, participated in a memorial march to Knoll’s home from Paris Nation square.
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