PARIS — Five teenagers who were detained after overturning as many as 250 gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France over the weekend had a clear “anti-Semitic motive,” a local prosecutor told reporters on Wednesday.
The motives of the youths, ages 15 to 17, were originally unclear. But the prosecutor, Philippe Vannier, said at a news conference in the Alsatian town of Saverne that the five teenagers had all admitted that they had taken part in the vandalism and had made Nazi salutes, spit on Jewish symbols and used terms like “dirty Jews” and “Heil Hitler.”
