Some 100 imams commemorated the Holocaust at a memorial monument near Paris.

The event took place in Drancy, a suburb of the French capital where tens of thousands of Jews were confined in 1942 before being transported to extermination camps, according to a report in the French daily Le Figaro. The paper called the event unprecedented.

Le Figaro reported the event was organized by Hassen Chalghoumi, the imam of Drancy and a veteran activist for dialogue between Muslims and Jews in France and against anti-Semitism, and the French Jewish novelist Marek Halter.

Since the second intifada of 2000, France’s Jewish population of approximately 550,000 has experienced an increase in anti-Semitic violence, mostly by Muslim extremists.  — jta