French police armed with rifles and sub machineguns patrolled the Belleville Jewish quarter of northeast Paris today following a night of rioting by Moslem mobs in which one Jew died and 24 policemen and an undetermined number of Jewish residents were injured. Forty Jewish-owned shops in the quarter were wrecked by the mobs who battled police riot squads until two o’clock this morning. The Belleville quarter resembled a battlefield today. Glass from smashed windows was strewn across the pavement. There was no immediate estimate available of the cost of the damage. The armed police were on hand to prevent new outbreaks and apparently to restrain Jewish youths who want to retaliate against the Moslems. An appeal for order was made today by Daniel Mayer, president of the League for the Rights of Man.
Eye-witnesses told the JTA that the clash began after Arab passers-by allegedly attacked a pregnant Jewish woman. Within minutes, the eye-witness said, hundreds of Arabs, mainly Algerians and Tunisians, arrived in trucks wielding steel bars and bottles. Their appearance indicated that the Incident was organized. An elderly Jew, Maurice Belaish, died of a heart attack reportedly after being molested by the mob. Steel helmeted police carrying shields arrived to quell the riot and pitched battles ensued in the narrow, winding streets of the quarter. The Paris Chief of Police, M. Grimaud was on the scene with a member of the Algerian Embassy staff to calm the mobs. The Belleville quarter, inhabited mainly by Jews from North Africa, was the scene of a three-day Arab-Jewish riot last year, in which hundreds of Jewish shops were damaged.
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.
