PARIS: French prosecutors opened an investigation on Tuesday into dozens of Stars of David daubed on buildings around the city and its suburbs. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne condemned “the despicable acts”, saying they will not go unpunished.

Fresh stars were painted overnight on the facades of several buildings in a southern district of Paris, a journalist saw on Tuesday. Similar tags appeared over the weekend in suburbs of the city including Vanves, Fontenay-aux-Roses and Aubervilliers.

In the nearby town of Saint-Ouen, they were accompanied by inscriptions.

The Union of Jewish Students of France said: “This act of marking recalls the processes of the 1930s and the Second World War which led to the extermination of millions of Jews.”

Paintings of Stars of David and Swastika on buildings have created fear among communities

The mayor of Aubervilliers, Karine Franclet, condemned the graffiti as being “in total contradiction with the fundamental values that we hold, including tolerance, equality and mutual respect, particularly in the current context”. Saint-Ouen Mayor Karim Bouamrane said perpetrators must be punished by the courts “with the greatest severity” in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).

Charlotte Goujon, the mayor of Petit-Quevilly, a town in the region of Normandy north of Paris, said she had filed a complaint after anti-Semitic symbols including swastikas had been discovered last week.

“In the name of the government, I condemn with absolute firmness these despicable acts,” Borne said in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament. “It is the duty of the Republic to protect all the Jews of France,” she said, adding that all those guilty should be arrested and convicted.

“Nothing can be tolerated, justified or excused.” Borne’s own father survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in the Holocaust but then took his own life when she was 11.

The government says more than 800 incidents of anti-Semitism were registered in France in last three weeks.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023