A Holocaust memorial has been vandalised by protesters angered by the killing of a teenager by French police.
Jewish groups were left outraged after the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation was defaced in the Nanterre suburb of Paris, France on Thursday.
The memorial commemorates 200,000 Jews who were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
Video footage circulating on Twitter shows protesters vandalising the monument and sitting atop the memorial as they protest against French police for the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old North African teen.
According to a video from Twitter account ‘Observatory of Decolonialism’, protesters said they were going to start another Holocaust. They wrote on the memorial: “We are going to make a Shoah”.
Stores and restaurants run by Jews were also set on fire in Sarcelles, Radio Shalom reported.
« On va faire une shoah » ont-ils écrit sur le mémorial de la déportation à Nanterre pic.twitter.com/WCmAXoApQW
— Observatoire du Décolonialisme (@decolonialisme) June 29, 2023
Ariel Goldmann, president of the United Jewish Social Fund, said of the vandalism: “It is an absolute outrage and a disgrace. Nothing is respected.”
The European Jewish Congress added: “It is truly horrifying to witness the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation in Nanterre being vandalised.
“This shameful act of disrespect for the memory of the victims of the Holocaust must be unequivocally condemned and those responsible held accountable.”
The unrest has come in response to the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel, whose death has revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France's low-income and multi-ethnic suburbs.
It is truly horrifying to witness the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation in Nanterre being vandalized.
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) June 29, 2023
This shameful act of disrespect for the memory of the victims of the Holocaust must be unequivocally condemned and those responsible held accountable. pic.twitter.com/B0HT3L9TiF
Around 40,000 police and gendarmes - along with elite Raid and GIGN units - were deployed in several cities overnight, with curfews issued in municipalities around Paris and bans on public gatherings in Lille and Tourcoing in the country's north.
In Nanterre, the epicentre of the unrest, tensions rose around midnight, with fireworks and explosives set off in the Pablo Picasso district, where Nahel had lived.
