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Jewish Teacher Assaulted in France

Assailants reportedly broke the victim’s nose and drew a swastika on his chest

by
Lily Wilf
March 24, 2014
(KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)
(KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)

A Jewish teacher was attacked in Paris on Thursday night by assailants who broke his nose and drew a swastika on his chest, JTA reports. The victim, identified only as K. Richard, told police he was leaving a kosher restaurant when three men who appeared to be of North African descent cornered him and pressed him to the wall. He was wearing a yarmulke at the time.

The Bureau for National Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a French watchdog group, released a report that said the attackers hit the victim’s face and chest, breaking his nose, before opening his shirt and drawing a swastika on his chest with a black marker. At the sound of shouts of “death to the Jews” and “dirty Jew” in French and Richard’s cries for help, a passerby approached and the attackers fled. No arrest has been reported.

This isn’t the first such incident in recent days. Last week an Israeli man was attacked with a stun gun outside a Parisian synagogue. Two weeks earlier, a French Jew was beaten on the Paris metro to phrases similar to those reportedly shouted by Richard’s attackers. The rising frequency of anti-Semitic acts in France is cause for great concern among French Jews. So far, the French government has made no comment on the matter.

Lily Wilf is an editorial intern at Tablet.