Alain de Rothschild, president of the Representative Council of Major Jewish Organizationsin France (CRIF), called on the government of France yesterday to apprehend and prosecute “those who would spread racial hatred or falsify history to slander the memory of our martyrs.” Rothschild was addressing several thousand people at a demonstration in the Jewish cemetery of Bagneux outside Paris where 80 gravestones were desecrated last Sunday.
Rothschild told those assembled that the Jews of France “want justice to be done” in having the culprits arrested and brought to trial. Among those attending the demonstration were representatives of the two Presidential candidates, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand. The Archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Jean Marie Lustiger, sent a personal message of sympathy to France’s Chief Rabbi Rene Sirat and also had a representative at the demonstration.
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