The mayor, the local priest and the entire municipal council of this small city in the province of Alsace attended a special ceremony in the local Jewish cemetery to protest its recent desecration. Practically all the city’s non-Jewish inhabitants, several hundred people, gave up Sunday sports and picnics to express their support to the Jewish community.
Two young boys, both now under arrest, broke into the cemetery last June and overturned some 60 tombstones. Rapidly identified, they could offer no explanation to the police for their vandalism besides saying they had felt “an urge.”
The city’s demonstration was organized by the mayor as an act of solidarity with the half-dozen Jewish families who still live here. The rabbi of the neighboring city of Sarreguemines, Ephraim Rozen, and the president of the Moselle area consistory, Rene Levy, attended the ceremony.
The Jewish community of Frauenberg used to number several hundred families from the 15th to the 18th century, when the cemetery was used. For several generations now, there have been only a half-dozen Jewish families living in the city.
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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.
