Members of France’s Jewish community wave Israeli and French flags at a ceremony outside the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris a year after four Jewish shoppers were killed in a terror attack at the store on January 9, 2015. (photo: Flash 90/Serge Attal)
Members of France’s Jewish community wave Israeli and French flags at a ceremony outside the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris a year after four Jewish shoppers were killed in a terror attack at the store on January 9, 2015. (photo: Flash 90/Serge Attal)
(JTA)–The prime minister of France, speaking at a ceremony to remember four Jewish victims of terror at a kosher supermarket in Paris, said he regrets that large numbers of his country’s Jews have left for Israel.
“France would not be France” without its Jews, Manuel Valls said Saturday evening at a commemoration held outside the Hyper Cacher supermarket on the first anniversary of the hostage siege there by an Islamist who was killed by police.
Families of the victims and survivors along with French Jewish leaders were at the ceremony arranged by the French Jewish umbrella group CRIF.
Valls spoke of the “immense anguish” of the Jewish community and condemned those who attack it.
“For these enemies who attack their compatriots, who tear apart the contract that unites us, there can be no worthy explanation,” he said.
French immigration to Israel has rocketed to record levels over the past three years as the country confronts rising anti-Semitism and a series of attacks which claimed almost 150 lives in Paris in 2015. Nearly 8,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel in 2015.
“Despite continuing traumatic feelings, life has returned to normal with a renewed sense of fraternity,” Rabbi Haim Korsia, the chief rabbi of France, said at the ceremony.
Also Saturday French President François Hollande unveiled a plaque in memory of Clarissa Jean-Philippe, the 26-year-old policewoman originally from Martinique who was killed who was killed by the Hyper Cacher terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, a day before the supermarket attack in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge. A street was also renamed after the fallen police officer.
On January 5 Hollande also unveiled a plaque at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine with the names of the 12 victims of the terrorist attack there two days earlier. Two brothers who were associates of Coulibaly perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo attack.
A public ceremony was scheduled for Sunday at the Place de la République in Paris to remember the attacks and the unity march in the city one year ago which drew 1.6 million people, including French and international leaders. An oak tree was to be planted during the ceremony.
Also, mosques throughout France opened their doors to visitors over the weekend.
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