Attack on the Great Synagogue of rue de la Régence

The Great Synagogue of Brussels, on rue de la Régence, is the principal Jewish sanctuary in Belgium, built in the previous century in the heart of the institutional quarter.

It was attacked during the summer, at the height of the Lebanon war and as violence targeting Jewish communities across Europe was multiplying. Worshippers were wounded and the building damaged. The attack came one month before the assault on rue des Rosiers in Paris and a few weeks before that on the restaurant in Berlin.

This series of attacks, carried out across Western Europe against places of worship and communal life, lastingly transformed the communities' relationship to their own security, which until then had been guaranteed by states alone.