President Francois Mitterrand was today one of the thousands of people who come to pay tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack which a year ago killed six people and wounded 22 in a Jewish restaurant in the old Jewish quarter.
It was remembrance day on the Rue des Rosiers where shops were closed and people came from all over the country to commemorate the event and show their solidarity with the Jewish community.
The street was closed to traffic early in the morning as loudspeakers started to broadcast traditional Hasidic tunes. A long line of people passed through the heavy police cordons and filed by Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant, laying flowers on the spot where most of the victims fell.
Mitterrand, who was accompanied by Elysee Palace Chief of Staff Jean-Louis Bianco and his main Jewish adviser, Joseph Attali, seemed personally moved as he read aloud the names of the victims — Jews, Christians and Moslems — on a plaque outside Goldenberg’s restaurant where the bullet marks are still visible.
On the day of the attack, August 9, 1982, Mitterrand flew back to Paris from his summer home in the south of France to attend a special funeral service in the quarter’s old synagogue. Today, as he recalled that tragic event, he told the newly elected president of the Council of Major French Jewish Organizations (CRIF), Theo Klein, that his Administration will continue all it can to prevent future terrorist attacks and to protect the Jewish community.
Klein and the new CRIF leadership had decided on a silent ceremony. There were no speeches, but Chief Rabbi Rene Sirat and half a dozen other religious leaders recited Kadish and extracts from the Psalms. For several hours, people walked past Goldenberg’s restaurant in silence. Some carried lit candles others laid wreaths on the dusty sidewalk.
CRIF LEADER CRITICIZED
Some of the community’s traditional leaders privately criticized Klein for having compared, in press interviews which appeared today, the Rue des Rosiers attack with the recent murder of three Arab students in Hebron. Klein, a 62-year-old law-yer who holds both French and Israeli nationalities and lives half of the time in Jerusalem where he is a member of the bar, said:
“As far as I am concerned, shooting people sitting in Goldenberg’s restaurant or those in an Islamic school in Hebron, is the same.” He told several daily papers, including the leftwing Liberation “How can one condemn the Rue des Rosiers attack without condemning what has happened in Hebron?
Klein’s declarations, welcomed by many, show how deeply the community has changed since last summer, Then, France’s Jews were already deeply shaken by the previous terrorist attack which killed four people and wounded 20 when a bomb exploded outside the Liberal synagogue on Rue Copernic. Local Jews felt hurt and insulted by the daily press comments accusing Israel of using unnecessary force and causing unnecessary civilian victims.
Today, the community still recalls the tragic days of August 1982, but has overcome the trauma. Many of those present at today’s ceremony on the Rue des Rosiers said that Klein’s declarations show that “we have overcome the hurdle and that the community now feels secure enough to speak its mind when it deems it necessary.”
POLICE SAY THEIR PROBES ARE MAKING HEADWAY
French police, meanwhile, say their year-long investigations are finally progressing. The police sources say they have ballistic proof that the Ruedes Rosiers killers used similar weapons to those which members of the Abu Nidal group used when they attacked Vienna’s main synagogue in August, 1981. The Vienna terrorists have been arrested and the Austrian police are convinced they belong to the Abu Nidal gang.
The French also believe that the terrorist arrested last April in Lisbon and charged with the murder of PLO roving ambassador and negotiator Issam Sartawi, was part of the Rue de Rosiers hit gang. The suspect was questioned by a French investigating magistrate and the French Ministry of Justice is preparing to ask Portugal for his extradition.
French radio reports said today that an Armenian involved in the recent Orly Airport explosion at the Turkish air line counter had also played an active role in the Rue des Rosiers attack. The man, for whom on arrest warrant has been issued, reportedly harbored the killers after the attack. He might also have supplied them, police suspect, with the grenade used against the Goldenberg restaurant.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
