'Protect our communities,' Jewish leaders urge Europe
WJC appeal comes as young woman brutally attacked in Paris, called 'dirty Jew'; British couple jailed for neo-Nazi activity, also named newborn after Hitler.
The World Jewish Congress called European leaders to protect their Jewish communities following an attack on a young woman in Paris last week, the latest sign of growing anti-Semitism on the continent.
“It’s unheard of that members of the Jewish community in France or anywhere else around the world should live in fear and insecurity because of their Jewish identity. This is a shocking and severe event,” said WJC’s chief executive Robert Singer.
The 20-year-old Jewish woman was attacked while walking in the Sarcelles neighborhood in the Paris suburbs on Sunday, by two teens who robbed and hit her while calling anti-Semitic slurs.
The woman told the police that the two hit her face, saying “are you scared, you dirty Jew?,” and then robbed her and fled the scene when passerbys interfered. She was hospitalized with a broken nose, and police forces are investigating the attack which has been defined as an anti-Semitic event.
Across the Channel, a British couple was sentenced for a total of 11 and a half years in prison, for their activity in the far-right neo-Nazi organization National Action, which was defined as a terror group in 2016. The two reportedly said that concentration camps should be restored.
The couple gave their newborn child the name of Adolf Hitler as his middle name, and posed with him while the father, a security guard at the Amazon company, was wearing a Ku klux klan hooded robe. The woman, a wedding photographer and Portugal national who immigrated to the UK, told another member of the organization that “all Jews should be killed.”
A Birmingham court sentenced the woman to five years and the man to six and a half years in prison, for their membership in an organization that “has grusom causes and wishes to destroy UK democracy,” according to the Judge.
The couple held hands and weeped when the sentence was read, after a seven-week long trial in which four other people were convicted of belonging to the neo-Nazi organization.
