PARIS (AP) — Survivors of Nazi atrocities joined young Jewish activists outside the Paris Holocaust memorial Saturday to sound the alarm about resurgent antisemitic hate speech, graffiti and abuse linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
The impact of the conflict is drawing increasing concern in France and beyond. Thousands of pro-Palestinian and left-wing activists rallied in Paris and around Britain on Saturday to call for a cease-fire, the latest of several such protests in major cities around the world since the war began.
France is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the U.S., and western Europe's largest Muslim population. The war has re-opened the doors to anti-Jewish sentiment in a country whose wartime collaboration with the Nazis left deep scars. Some 100,000 people marched through Paris last week to denounce antisemitism.
Esther Senot, 96, said the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 stirred up her memories of World War II.
“Massacres like that, I have lived through,″ she said at the Paris Holocaust Memorial. ''I saw people die in front of me.″
Her sister was among them: ‘'They brought her to the gas chamber in front of my eyes,'' she said.
Most of Senot's family members died. She survived 17 months in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps and made it back to France at age 17, weighing just 32 kilograms (70 pounds).
Senot was speaking at an event organized by Jewish…
