French Jewish mayor’s home covered with anti-Semitic graffiti

Weeks before the incident, which happened on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Germany were smashed.

Advertisement

(JTA) — The home of a Jewish mayor in France was covered with anti-Semitic graffiti including swastikas and “Dirty Jew, get out.”

The graffiti were spray-painted Friday on the home of Etienne Wolf, mayor of Brumath, near Strasbourg in France’s east, France3 reported. Police have no suspects in the incident, which occurred on the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms by the Nazis against German and Austrian Jews.

“Mayor Marx = Jude,” a reference to the communist ideologue Karl Marx, followed by the German-language word for “Jew,” also was painted on the house along with several swastikas and the words “Dirty Jew, get out.” Another tag read “Jews want to destroy Whites.”

Wolf discovered the tags early in the morning when he came out to get his newspaper.

“It stunned me. I wondered what I had done to deserve this,” Wolf, whose town has approximately 10,000 residents, told France3.

In September, in the eastern town of Zoebersdorf, located 15 miles northwest of Strasbourg, unidentified individuals wrote similar tags that read “Marx dirty Jews, immigrants out” on the headquarters of the Town Council.

In recent weeks, public buildings were similarly defaced in other towns in the Alsatian region of Bas-Rhin, including in Thal-Marmoutier, Bremmelbach, Mollkirch and Langensoultzbach.

Meanwhile, in Germany, four headstones in a Jewish cemetery were toppled and two of them were smashed, the Weser-ith News website reported last week.

The incident occurred last month in Holzminden, a town of about 20,000 located in southern Lower Saxony. There are no suspects.

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement