Two antisemitic incidents took place in France this week.
In Peros Guirec, a city in the Britanny region, a memorial commemorating the life of Holocaust survivor and former European Parliament president Simone Veil has been defaced with swastikas.
Police has opened an investigation.
Simone Veil, born in 1917, survived the Holocaust to become a celebrated figure in French politics, fighting for abortion rights as a minister, battling antisemitism and serving as the first president of the European parliament.
As a teenager she was deported to Auschwitz and lost her mother, father and brother in the camps.
Veil died in 2017 and in 2018 President Emmanuel Macron decreed she should have the honor of a final resting place in the Pantheon in Paris that holds the tombs of France’s greatest heroes.
In the second incident, a star of David and the word “Who?” were engraved on a sculpture in Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, in the department of Haute-Garonne. This echoes the sign brandished by a far-right teacher last week in Metz during a demonstration against the health pass, on which one could read “but who?” (is responsible for the coronavirus) followed by a list of Jewish personalities.