Damage to the Holocaust Memorial in Lyon: "The Republic will never allow any anti-Semitic act to pass"

As anti-Semitic attacks increase in the Rhône department, the interministerial delegate prefect for the fight against anti-Semitism, Mathias Ott, visited the Lyon metropolitan area on Friday, September 5.

Accompanied by the mayor of Lyon and the regional chief rabbi, the latter went to the Shoah memorial in Place Carnot to lay a wreath on the recently damaged monument: "I came to bring a message of support and solidarity to the Jewish community, which was particularly shocked by the damage to this Shoah memorial," the prefect told the press.

As a reminder, an inscription "Free Gaza" was discovered on the memorial's commemorative plaque on August 30, "a defacement that is part of a broader context of increasing anti-Semitic acts in the country," the prefect recalled.

Faced with this new act of vandalism, Mathias Ott insisted that the Republic "will never allow any act of anti-Semitism to go unchallenged." The mayor of Lyon, for his part, stressed the importance of acting quickly: "Any act, any anti-Semitic or racist remark must be immediately addressed and reframed (...) so that justice can do its work." Regarding the Jewish people, Grégory Doucet maintains that it is necessary to "ensure their safety," particularly by monitoring places of worship.

For the Chief Rabbi of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Daniel Dahan, these increasingly recurring acts stem from the current tense climate and are amplified by social networks: "In people's minds there is a lot of confusion, they confuse everything because these are complex geopolitical conflicts."

Following the complaint filed by the president of the Shoah Memorial Association, Jean-Olivier Viout, the matter has been referred to the courts. While the prefect announced that he has no information on the ongoing investigation, he asserted that he has "full confidence " in the Rhône police force to provide a judicial response "worthy of this unspeakable act."

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