President Nicolas Sarkozy firmly condemned this profanation on the day celebrating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. An official communiqué from the President’s office said that “On this day when we are celebrating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp and the International Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust, the President wishes to express his support and friendship for France’s Jewish community”. Nicolas Sarkozy “hopes that the perpetrators of these profanations will be identified as quickly as possible and their deeds treated with utmost severity”, continues the text.
The next day, over two hundred and fifty people took part in a quiet ceremony organised by the Strasburg Jewish community at the Jewish cemetery in Cronenbourg. Brice Hortefeux, Minister of Home Affairs, senior representatives of the Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim communities, as well as local politicians also took part in the ceremony.
After reviving the memorial flame for the Jewish victims of Nazism, the crowd went to pay their respects to the tombs that had been profaned.
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