WJC remembers Mirielle Knoll
The World Jewish Congress held a memorial for Mireille Knoll, the Holocaust survivor murdered last week in Paris, at its headquarters in New York in the presence of French Consul General Anne-Claire Legendre.
WJC President Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder with Consul General of France Anne-Claire Legendre at the WJC headquarters in New York on 29 March 2018.
Photo: Shahar Azran
WJC President Ronald S. Lauder said: “The World Jewish Congress stands together with the French Jewish community in deploring this barbaric and horrific murder. We must continue to sound the alarm again and again until we put a stop to this terrifying rise of antisemitism spreading today across France and all of Europe.”
Mireille Knoll, the 85-year-old Jewish woman brutally murdered in her apartment, was a Holocaust survivor. She had managed to evade as a child the 1942 Vel d’Hiv Nazi-directed roundup by French police of more than 13,000 Jews who were sent to Nazi death camps.
“No human being should ever have to live in fear of being a target of such aggression because of race, religion or any other factor. We are grateful for support of the French government and the swift response of the French authorities to help to bring the perpetrators of this hate crime to justice,” Lauder said. “We have now had too many wake-up calls, in Europe and on other continents. The World Jewish Congress will continue to do everything in our power for the safety and security of our member communities. We count on France, a friend to the Jewish community and to Israel of long-standing, to be our partner in the battle against antisemitism.”
In her remarks at the memorial, Consul General Legendre declared: “When a Jew is killed in France, it is as if the entire nation has been killed.”
85-year-old Mireille Knoll, who escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp when French police rounded up Jews in Paris in 1942, was found in her burning apartment on Monday stabbed 11 times in what French authorities have deemed a hate crime.
