A new “Orleans affair” has broken out in the French city of Chalon sur Saone where public rumors are being circulated that local Jews are “kidnapping” teen-aged girls and “selling them abroad.” Jewish sources in Chalon sur Saone told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the rumors started about two weeks ago in the local high school for girls. From there it spread to the rest of the city’s population.
Soon after the rumors first started, anti-Jewish slogans were painted at night on Jewish-owned shops. Rumors, similar to those which rocketed Orleans in the spring of 1969, claim that Jewish shop keepers drug and kidnap their non-Jewish customers, especially young girls, to sell them abroad. At the request of the local 200-member Jewish community the local police investigated the rumors and printed a denial in the city’s newspaper, “Le Courrier.” In spite of this, the rumors are continuing unabated, local Jews told the JTA.
Two prominent French Jewish organizations expressed their concern today over the Chalon sur Saone situation and the anti-Semitism growing there. A spokesman for the Representative Council of Jews in France (CRIF) declared that the situation in the French town was another sign of a rebirth of anti-Semitism in France. The same view was taken by the International League Against Racism and anti-Semitism (LICA).
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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.
