The Jewish cemetery of Westhoffen, in Bas-Rhin, was desecrated. "Anti-Semitic inscriptions", mainly "swastikas", were discovered on Tuesday, December 2, on 107 graves.
This discovery comes as antisemitic tags were already found Tuesday morning in the municipality of Schaffhouse-sur-Zorn ", about twenty kilometers from Westhoffen, according to the prefecture.The gendarmerie" is currently making the first acts of findings and investigations "in the desecrated cemetery.
Desecration of the Westhoffen Jewish Cemetery.
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"The most total support to the Jewish community"
The Bas-Rhin Prefect, Jean-Luc Marx, "condemns with the utmost firmness these despicable anti-Semitic acts that strike once again the Bas-Rhin and expresses its total support to the Jewish community," said a statement.
"It's consternation, it's shock," reacted Maurice Dahan, the president of the Jewish Consistory of Bas-Rhin. According to him, the cemetery has some 700 graves. Those who were desecrated were "essentially" stained with "swastikas", he added.
Alsace has been confronted for several months with an upsurge of graffiti and degradations of an anti-Semitic and / or racist character.
In the Bas-Rhin, 96 graves of Quatzenheim Jewish cemetery, about fifteen kilometers from Westhoffen, had been stained with antisemitic tags on 19 February, as well as that of Herrlisheim, north-east of Strasbourg, on 11 December 2018.
In mid-April, racist and anti-Semitic tags were discovered on the walls of the town hall of Dieffenthal (Bas-Rhin). A few days later, swastikas and insults had been tagged on the facade of an elected house in Schiltigheim, near Strasbourg.
Anti-Semitic writings were also discovered in early March in front of a school in Strasbourg and swastikas on the walls of an old synagogue in Mommenheim. Municipalities and elected officials have also been the target of degradations.
With AFP