A 26-year-old disabled Jew was seriously wounded by a group of seven pro-Nazis who stormed a bar last Thursday night in the Jewish quarter of Paris. The seven attackers, who were quite drunk, entered the bar at 2 a.m. and sought a brawl with a lone customer. Andre Zeitoun told the men to leave. They pounced on him and he fell to the floor under a flurry of blows.
The attackers used machetes, cudgels and knives. The defenseless Zeitoun — he was seriously injured in a car accident two years ago — lay in a pool of blood when they left the bar. The attackers were arrested a few minutes later by a police patrol and said they had stormed the bar because they wanted to “kill a Jew.” The condition of Zeitoun was described as serious.
This was the second such attack by neo-Nazis against the Jewish quarter in a month and inhabitants are now envisaging setting up defense groups to prevent new raids. “This second attack shows that neo-Nazis are more than ever active and determined to stage other racist raids. This is a dangerous situation because many of us are now tempted to use weapons against these racists,” a spokesman for the inhabitants of the area said.
Last June, a group of neo-Nazis raided the quarter shouting, “Kill the Jews.” Several organizations apposing racism and anti-Semitism severely criticized the attack on Zeitoun.
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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.
