While on a tour of the Auschwitz death camp and memorial in Poland on Sunday, a group of Jewish students from Israel and abroad were confronted by three French males who shouted anti-Semitic and anti-Israel epithets at them.
While the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) group was being led through the site, the French tourists ran up and began cursing and shouting at the Jewish students.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Maya Ober, 21, of Poland as saying the first assailant "told us to go back to Israel and said that we were stupid and should be ashamed to walk around with an Israeli flag."
The following day, vandals defiled a Jewish cemetery and war memorial in Lyon, France. Swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti were painted on 56 graves and on a memorial to Jewish soldiers who fought for France in World War I. President Jacques Chirac, the government and Jewish leaders condemned the vandalism on Tuesday. A joint prayer in honor of those whose graves were defiled is scheduled for this evening, with the participation of French leaders.
More than 300 tombs or graves, mostly Jewish but some Muslim, have been desecrated in eastern France just since April. France is home to 600,000 Jews and five million Muslims.
To the east, in the Czech Republic, eighty tombstones in an ancient Jewish cemetery were knocked over and damaged according to reports from Hranice, a township located 300 kilometers (180 miles) east of Prague. Vandals also sprayed swastikas on many of the tombstones.
While the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) group was being led through the site, the French tourists ran up and began cursing and shouting at the Jewish students.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Maya Ober, 21, of Poland as saying the first assailant "told us to go back to Israel and said that we were stupid and should be ashamed to walk around with an Israeli flag."
The following day, vandals defiled a Jewish cemetery and war memorial in Lyon, France. Swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti were painted on 56 graves and on a memorial to Jewish soldiers who fought for France in World War I. President Jacques Chirac, the government and Jewish leaders condemned the vandalism on Tuesday. A joint prayer in honor of those whose graves were defiled is scheduled for this evening, with the participation of French leaders.
More than 300 tombs or graves, mostly Jewish but some Muslim, have been desecrated in eastern France just since April. France is home to 600,000 Jews and five million Muslims.
To the east, in the Czech Republic, eighty tombstones in an ancient Jewish cemetery were knocked over and damaged according to reports from Hranice, a township located 300 kilometers (180 miles) east of Prague. Vandals also sprayed swastikas on many of the tombstones.