(JTA) — Several tombstones were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti at a Jewish cemetery near the French city of Strasbourg.
The incident was discovered Tuesday in Herrlisheim, a northern suburb, the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities said in a statement. “CRIF = ZOG” and the digits 88 were written on the tombstones. ZOG stands for “Zionist occupation government,” and the number is code for Adolf Hitler.
It’s the four time in two months that graffiti featuring far-right anti-Semitic rhetoric has been discovered in sites linked to Jews in the eastern Alsace region. In two incidents, Jewish mayors were the targets.
Also Tuesday, Strasbourg saw one of its main avenues renamed for Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and former minister who died last year.
Later in the day, three people were killed and 12 injured at a Christmas market there in a shooting attack by a Muslim radical, police said. The suspect, they said, may have fled into Germany.
Separately, the Paris 13 university initiated disciplinary action against eight students in connection with a classmate’s complaints in October about anti-Semitic bullying against her.
The complainant, a medical student identified in the French media only as Rose, said her classmates made Holocaust jokes about her and ranked her and other Jews according to their level of affiliation to Judaism. She said the alleged abuse happened online and face to face.
The students being investigated may be expelled, according to a report Monday in Le Parisien.
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