STRASBOURG, France — A Jewish cemetery in eastern France was desecrated Wednesday, with at least 18 gravestones marked with swastikas and overturned, police and Jewish officials said.
The desecration in a Strasbourg cemetery came as Jews marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp, a symbol of the Holocaust, when the Nazis killed millions.
President Nicolas Sarkozy “firmly condemns this unbearable act, the expression of odious racism,” said a statement from his office. It asked that those responsible be quickly identified and their acts “treated with the severity called for.”
Meanwhile, in Poland, bundled tightly against the cold and snow, elderly Auschwitz survivors walked among the barracks and watchtowers of Auschwitz and Birkenau on Wednesday, many clad in scarves bearing the gray and blue stripes of their Nazi prison garments decades ago.
Moving later into a heated tent to escape the 10-degree temperatures, they heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vow that his country would never allow anyone to erase the memory of the victims of Nazi Germany’s death camps.
“We sit in a warm tent and remember those who shivered to death, and if they didn’t freeze to death, they were gassed and burned,” Netanyahu said in a solemn ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army.
