“I condemn in the strongest terms these acts of vandalism in a Christian and Jewish cemetery,” tweeted, this Thursday morning, the Minister of the InteriorGérald Darmanin, about the acts of vandalism that occurred in Noé, south of Toulouse, in Haute-Garonne.
According to our colleagues from France Blue, four Christian tombs and two Jewish ones were degraded without, however, any inscriptions being inscribed. For these facts, Gérald Darmanin announced the opening of a gendarmerie investigation without specifying whether a particular track was envisaged.
Graves of rounded up Jews and Spanish Republicans
However, the gesture is certainly not trivial, in particular because of the tombs that the cemetery of Noah shelters. Indeed, during the Second World War, in 1941, what was a supervised residence center for foreign workers in this town was transformed, on the initiative of the authorities, into an internment camp. There were imprisoned Spanish Republicans fleeing the Franco regime, and Jews persecuted by the Vichy regime.
From this camp, hundreds of Jews were deported to concentration camps and at least 200 died there, not counting the Spanish prisoners. Some of them were buried in the town cemetery, Noé, and their graves still remain there.