PARIS — Teenage vandals are suspected of overturning as many as 250 gravestones in a cemetery in a rural part of eastern France near the German border, where many Jews once lived but have long since left.
The desecration, which was carried out Thursday but only discovered on Sunday, was perceived by the Jewish community in France as another reminder of the increasingly anti-Semitic mood in the country.
However, according to the local prosecutor, Philippe Vannier, who announced Monday that the police had detained five youths, ages 15 to 17, after one of them confessed, it was not clear if the cemetery was targeted because it was Jewish, or rather because it was thought to be abandoned.
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Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the director of the American Jewish Committee in Paris, noted that it was important not to lump all crimes against Jews together and that there was a difference between killing Jews and desecration, though both are part of a larger problem.
“We’re witnessing a moment of growing tension and growing hate in Europe, and the anti-Semitism is an expression of something more that is going wrong,” she said.
