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.
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.
