President Reuven Rivlin on Friday sent a letter of condolences to the family of Mireille Knoll, the 85-year-old French Holocaust survivor who was murdered in her Paris home last week.
“On behalf of the State of Israel, I send you our sincere condolences on the tragic passing of Mrs. Mireille Knoll in Paris this week,” wrote the President.
“That this terrible event should happen now just two weeks before the day we commemorate the Holocaust and mourn the victims is especially poignant.”
“The increasing anti-Semitic attacks throughout Europe, together with the rising support for political parties that promote racism, is particularly worrying and we continue to call on the leaders of Europe to increase their efforts to eliminate this,” Rivlin continued.
“It is difficult to realize that the life of someone who escaped the horrors of the Holocaust and whose home was open to all those in need should end in so cruel a way. The people of Israel open their hearts to you all at this difficult time. May you know no further sorrow,” he concluded.
Knoll, who escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp when French police rounded up Jews in Paris in 1942, was stabbed 11 times before her apartment was set ablaze by the perpetrators on March 23, police say.
Prosecutors on Monday indicted two defendants in connection with what is being tried as a murder with aggravated circumstances of a hate crime. They are also charged with robbery.
One of the suspects in custody, a 29-year-old Muslim man, was a neighbor of Knoll. Prosecutors investigating the murder have confirmed the two suspects in custody targeted her because she was Jewish.
Knoll’s funeral on Wednesday was attended by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said that "this is a crime and a murder of a helpless woman only because of one fact: that she was Jewish."
"The killer harmed the most sacred values of the French nation," he added.
Macron on Tuesday condemned the murder, calling it “appalling” and vowing to fight anti-Semitism.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat and Passover in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)