PARIS — A fresh outburst of anti-Semitic violence throughout France has Jewish leaders fearing the return of Kristallnacht.
The reference to the horrors of Nazi Germany, issued by French Jewish leader Jean Kahn, hit the French dailies Monday morning as police in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles were still investigating a Sunday fire that reduced a synagogue to ashes.
Then on Tuesday, arsonists struck a pavilion in a Jewish cemetery in the eastern town of Schiltigheim, causing the pavilion’s roof to collapse and destroying most of its walls, police said. The perpetrators in both attacks have not been identified. And late Tuesday night, two assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at a Marseilles synagogue that was being guarded by two police officers, but they did not set it on fire. No one was injured, and the attackers got away, according to the Associated Press.
The latest attacks followed a weekend of anti-Jewish aggression that included attacks on synagogues in Lyons and Strasbourg and a shooting at a kosher butcher shop near the southwestern city of Toulouse in which no one was injured.
In addition, a French Jewish couple was injured in a weekend attack in the southern part of the country.
Amid the spate of attacks, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin pleaded to the French public not to bring to France the violence that has plagued the Middle East.
The “passions that flare up in the Middle East must not flare up here,” Jospin said. “Even if we have the largest Jewish community in Europe and one of the largest Arab-Muslim communities on the European continent, we must not import this violence.”
The weekend violence apparently was sparked by indignation aroused by pro-Palestinian demonstrations in France, Germany and Greece on Saturday.
Lyons and Strasbourg witnessed the largest of these protests, with turnouts estimated at 6,000 and 3,000, respectively, while police reported smaller showings in Toulouse and Marseilles.
The first of the attacks took place Saturday morning before the protest in Lyons. According to an eyewitness, approximately 15 hooded men drove a car through the large wooden doors of a synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood of La Duchere and then set it on fire.
The other incidents occurred just hours after demonstrations in which protestors carried banners that read “We are all Palestinians,” “Sharon Assassin,” and “Stop the Massacre of Palestinians.”
In Toulouse, a man opened fire at a closed kosher butcher shop on Saturday evening, causing damage to the building’s facade. Hours later, vandals set fire to the doors of a synagogue in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, home to one of France’s largest and oldest communities of Ashkenazi Jews.
Firemen were able to extinguish the fires in Lyons and Strasbourg before they spread, but the arson in Marseilles completely leveled the 4,800-square-foot Or Aviv synagogue.
Outside the synagogue on Tuesday morning, hundreds of families from the congregation gathered and erected a tent in the parking lot for prayers to mark the end of the Passover holiday. They vowed to rebuild their synagogue.
“A blow was delivered against us, but it is not a mortal blow,” said Claude Guedj, 40, a member of the congregation.
Reactions in the Jewish community ranged from hurt to outrage, but nobody seemed very surprised.
Commenting on the Toulouse attack, Rabbi David Layani claimed: “This new act comes after hundreds of others that have struck the French Jewish community in the last 18 months, following events in the Middle East which make the situation here extremely tense.”
In Strasbourg, Jewish officials were quick to blame demonstrators for stirring up anti-Semitic hatred.
“I am not surprised by this fire,” said Gilbert Roos, an Israeli diplomat in Strasbourg. “Yesterday there were anti-Israeli calls, but also calls for hatred.”
Interviewed on French television Sunday, Francis Levy, president of Strasbourg’s Jewish community, demanded that the French government protect the safety of Jews in his city.
“I absolutely ask that the state authorities take measures very rapidly so that the religious places in Strasbourg and in the surrounding area are placed under the government’s supervision,” he told the French news channel LCI.
In the midst of a heated presidential race, the two frontrunners, President Jacques Chirac and Jospin, were quick to denounce the surge of anti-Jewish aggression.
Jospin said he was “revolted” by these “cowardly and absurd” acts. “At the time when the Jewish community is celebrating Passover and Catholics are gathering for Easter,” he said, “I want to remind people that tolerance and respect for religion are key principles of our republic.”
Chirac, who has enraged Jews in the past by denying the problem of French anti-Semitism, condemned “the brutal, hateful and unacceptable attack. Those responsible should be prosecuted and severely punished.”
Anti-Semitism has become epidemic in neighborhoods where Jews and Arabs live side by side. While many Jews are still digesting the news of the latest outbreaks, the initial responses of Jewish leaders indicate a shift in their perception of the problem.
Partly as a result of the connection between the pro-Arafat demonstrations and the latest anti-Semitic violence, French Jews appear more inclined to view these incidents as coordinated acts of terrorism than the irrational anger of Arab teens.
This change was most apparent in Lyons, where Jewish leaders called the synagogue attack “a commando operation.”
Alain Jacubowicz, a Jewish leader in Lyons, called the attack on the Duchere synagogue “clearly an act of war.”
For French Jews, the only hopeful note in a disquieting weekend was the prompt and earnest response from Muslim religious leaders in Lyons.
At an interfaith meeting Sunday, Kamel Kabtane, the rector of the mosque in Lyons, told the Jews gathered there: “The Muslim community and all the people who came with me today want to express solidarity with you, and it denounces with you and as loudly as you do these terrorist acts that attack freedom of religion.”
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.