A Holocaust memorial unveiled only eight months ago in the French city of Lyon has been inscribed with the words “Free Gaza”, local officials said, amid growing concern about antisemitic incidents in France.
The words were scratched into the black marble memorial late on Saturday, the city’s mayor, Grégory Doucet, said. Yonathan Arfi, of the Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), posted a photo on social media and called the incident “despicable”.
Doucet said the defacement of the 3-metre-tall memorial, outside the city station from where hundreds of Jews were transported to Nazi death camps, was “intolerable” and the perpetrators would be “pursued and prosecuted”. Lyon “continues to stand firm against hatred, antisemitism and racism”, the mayor said.
The memorial was unveiled in January to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The number of antisemitic incidents recorded in France has risen sharply since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has killed at least 63,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry.
The French interior ministry said last week that 27% fewer anti-Jewish acts were recorded in France in the first six months of 2025 than in the same period the previous year, but that the number was more than twice as high as in the first half of 2023.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has accused Emmanuel Macron of contributing to a surge in antisemitism by calling for international recognition of a Palestinian state, a claim the French president described as “abject” and “erroneous”.
This week the French government, which has publicly denounced antisemitism and increased security at synagogues and other Jewish centres, summoned the US ambassador to Paris after he accused it of not doing enough to stem anti-Jewish hate crimes.
