Arson of the Jewish social center and antisemitic inscriptions

The Jewish community center on rue Popincourt, in Paris, houses a food aid service, assistance for the elderly, and the archives of mutual aid associations inherited from the post-war period. The fire is set at night and the walls are covered with antisemitic inscriptions.

The attack comes at the end of a period during which acts targeting Jewish people and Jewish places have multiplied in France, against a backdrop of tensions imported from the Middle East: synagogues set ablaze, schools defaced, cemeteries desecrated. The choice of a community center — that is to say, a place of assistance to the most vulnerable, rather than a place of worship — was seen by the community as an attack on its very capacity to care for its own.