Outrage as women who escaped Nazi horror murdered in her flat
FAMILY MEMBERS, friends and France’s president have honoured an 85-year-old woman who escaped the Nazis 76 years ago but was stabbed to death last week in her Paris apartment, apparently targeted because she was Jewish.
Mireille Knoll’s death has taken on national importance, reminding France of both historical antiSemitism and its resurgence in some quarters in recent years.
President Emmanuel Macron decried the “barbaric” views that fuelled an Islamic extremist’s supermarket hostage-taking last week as well as Ms Knoll’s killing.
In a speech, Mr Macron said Ms Knoll’s attacker “murdered an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish, and in doing so profaned our sacred values and our history”.
Later, Mr Macron made a surprise appearance at Ms Knoll’s funeral ceremony in the Jewish section of the cemetery in the Paris suburb of Bagneux, where sombre-faced guests gathered. Silent marches were held yesterday around the country.
Far-right French leader Marine Le Pen is insisting on attending the Paris march despite criticism from France’s leading Jewish group. The head of the CRIF Jewish organisation said Ms Le Pen’s National Front and members of the far left would not be welcome at the marches.
Ms Le Pen tweeted defiantly that the CRIF cannot stop her from attending.
Ms Knoll was killed on Friday in her apartment, which was then set on fire. Prosecutors filed preliminary charges against two people for murder with anti-Semitic motives, including a neighbour who was a regular guest at her flat.
Authorities have not released the names of the two men in custody but have said the chief suspect is a 29-year-old with a past conviction who lived in the same building.
Ms Knoll was forced to flee Paris with her family aged nine to escape a notorious Second World War round-up of Jews. After the war she returned to Paris and spent most of her life in the apartment where she was killed.