Anger as French protesters compare vaccines to Nazi horrors
PARIS, France (AP) — A French Holocaust survivor has denounced anti-vaccination protesters comparing themselves to Jews who were persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. French officials and anti-racism groups joined the 94-year-old in expressing indignation.
As more than 100,000 people marched around France against Government vaccine rules on Saturday, some demonstrators wore yellow stars recalling the ones the Nazis forced Jews to wear. Other demonstrators carried signs evoking the Auschwitz death camp or South Africa’s apartheid regime, claiming the French Government was unfairly mistreating them with its anti-pandemic measures.
“You can’t imagine how much that upset me. This comparison is hateful. We must all rise up against this ignominy,” Holocaust survivor Joseph Szwarc said Sunday during a ceremony commemorating victims of anti-semitic and racist acts by the French State, which collaborated with Adolf Hitler’s regime.
“I wore the star, I know what that is. I still have it in my flesh,” Szwarc, who was deported from France by the Nazis, said with tears in his eyes. “It is everyone’s duty to not allow this outrageous, anti-semitic, racist wave to pass over us.”
Historian and former Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld also took aim at the analogy, stressing yesterday that “the yellow star was a symbol of death that excluded Jews from society and marked them for extermination, while vaccines, on the other hand, save lives”. To equate the two, he told The Associated Press, is an “odious” comparison that serves to trivialise the yellow star.
French G0vernment spokesman Gabriel Attal lamented the “absolutely abject comparisons” of vaccine rules to Nazi atrocities, and he urged other political leaders to speak out.
The International League against Racism and Antisemitism said the protesters were “mocking victims of the Holocaust” and minimising crimes against humanity committed during World War II.
Some commentators said political forces that are jockeying ahead of next year’s French presidential election manipulated the protesters.
Saturday’s protests drew a mix of people angry at the Government for various reasons, and notably, supporters of the far right. Prominent French far right figures have been convicted in the past of anti-semitism, racism and denying the Holocaust.
The Government is introducing a Bill requiring all healthcare workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and requiring COVID-19 passes to enter restaurants and other venues.
Polls suggest most French people support the measures, but they have prompted anger in some quarters. Vandals targeted two vaccination centres in south-west France over the weekend. One was set on fire, and another covered in graffiti, including a reference to the Nazi occupation of France.