Anti-Semitic, racist and anti-migrant tags have proliferated in recent days in Alsace and Lorraine, leaving mayors exasperated and sometimes helpless.
Organize a meeting with "a pastor, a rabbi and a priest"
In Porcelette, Moselle, a small town of 2,500 inhabitants located less than two kilometers from the German border, the mayor Eddie Muller (no label) has announced to AFP have decided to file a complaint. The inscriptions "have accumulated for several months" on the walls of the cultural space: swastikas, "Sie Heil", "Jude Tot", "Long live Hitler", he lamented.
The mayor suspects "young people from Porcelette and surrounding communities" - French and not Germans, although his town is located close to the border - which generate nuisance in the evening. "We had already had some time ago on the play area of the kindergarten swastikas and anti-Jewish inscriptions," he notes. To engage with some of these young people and explain to them "what the Jews suffered under the Nazi yoke", Eddie Muller plans to organize a meeting with "a pastor, a rabbi and a priest".
Tags that "confirm a criminal act"
In Saint-Nabor, in Bas-Rhin, at the foot of Mont Sainte-Odile, anti-migrant tags were discovered on the town hall on Wednesday. Some target the prefect of the Grand Est region, accused of welcoming migrants, another the Spanish humanitarian ship Open Arms that crosses the Mediterranean. One of these tags also claims a fire on Monday evening a building in Schiltigheim, a suburb of Strasbourg, where an association hosted families of foreign origin.
Asked by AFP, the mayor, François Lantz, has confirmed the filing of a complaint "very surprising" that the authors of these tags "confirm a criminal act". Saint-Nabor "is a peaceful village of 500 inhabitants, at the foot of Mont St Odile", he observes. Hateful tags such as "stop invasion" and "virez les clandos" (sic) accompanied by Nazi symbols were also discovered Tuesday on the walls of an old Strasbourg brewery, now owned by the city and squatted by shelter and migrants.