Echoes of Kristallnacht Haunt France in Recent Antisemitic Attacks

The jihadists, led by Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, were closely allied with Hitler, so this is to be expected.

From The European Conservative

By Hélène de Lauzun, PhD

Beating, intimidation, and humiliation have become commonplace for Jews across the country.

Since the attacks of October 7th, antisemitic acts have exploded in France, with the Muslim community being overwhelmingly responsible for these attacks—a fact that has been hushed up by politicians and the media. Just recently, three highly symbolic events demonstrated the worsening climate for the Jews of France.

A symbolic cancellation

In 1942, a very modest French couple, Jeanne and Jean Philippeau, living in the city of Vendôme, hid Jewish children in their home for many months. Their commitment earned them recognition as ‘Righteous Among the Nations.’ A ceremony was scheduled in Vendôme for May 28th to pay tribute to them, but on March 23rd, the town’s mayor informed the Yad Vashem committee that the ceremony would be postponed … and then, it was cancelled altogether. 

Two reasons were put forward by the local councillor: “the proximity of the local elections, which risks limiting the full mobilisation of the municipality and the local population around this major event,” and “the current geopolitical context, marked by the conflict between the State of Israel and Hamas, which arouses particular sensitivities within our different communities.” 

Two convoluted formulas for a sad fact: in France in 2025, it is no longer possible to commemorate the rescue of Jewish children by French citizens under pressure from immigrant Muslim communities—in this case, a large Turkish community in the city. As the Righteous Medal is an Israeli decoration, the flag of the Hebrew State would have been displayed alongside the French flag for the duration of the ceremony—unthinkable for this right-wing mayor, who refuses to “take risks.”

‘Ordinary’ street antisemitism

On Friday, April 11th, a man was violently attacked in Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, while walking his dog. He was targeted because he was wearing a Star of David pendant. Two individuals physically attacked him: one hit him in the face, while the other filmed the scene, all the while hurling insults at him such as ‘sale feuj’ (French slang for ‘dirty Jew’). They then fled the scene. According to the victim, the two men claimed to be members of La Jeune Garde antifasciste, the ultra-left movement founded by activist Raphaël Arnault, who is on the national security watch list. Elected deputy for Avignon on behalf of La France Insoumise (LFI), he recently made a name for himself in the National Assembly by intimidating journalists from the conservative investigative magazine Frontières.

Street riot amid Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The third event set the web ablaze on Saturday, April 12th, giving rise to a series of contradictory accounts, before things became clearer. A demonstration in support of Palestine was organised in Strasbourg by the Strasbourg Palestine collective. Provocative gestures were exchanged between demonstrators and a man supporting Israel, who was chased into a bakery where he took refuge. Minister Aurore Bergé took up the case, explaining that the shop had been attacked because it was Jewish, which caused a stir on social media. But the Dreher bakery, which has been established in Strasbourg for several decades, is a business with Franco-German origins like so many others in Alsace, and it was not explicitly targeted. While there was not the ‘pogrom effect’ feared by some observers, the incident revealed once again the high degree of inflammability of an opinion on edge on the Israeli-Palestinian question, with an almost instantaneous recourse to confrontation and violence—a “simple ‘individual pogrom,’” as Charlie Hebdo journalist François Camé pointed out with bitter irony on X, refusing to play down the facts.

In the space of a few days, these three cases give an idea of the level of pressure that is now being exerted in France on citizens of the Jewish faith or who support Israel.