France: Memorial honoring young Holocaust victims vandalized

Macron denounced the “shameful and cowardly act that won’t remain unpunished.”

A memorial in the city of Lyon honoring the Jewish children of Izieu, who were deported to Nazi camps in 1944 was desecrated in France,

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the desecration of the memorial.

In a statement Tuesday, Macron denounced the “shameful and cowardly act that won’t remain unpunished.”

The plaque bearing the names of the victims, including 44 children and 7 adults, was broken and removed from its base in a public garden.

On April 6, 1944, the Lyon Gestapo, headed by Klaus Barbie, searched the Children’s Home of Izieu and arrested the children and their teachers. Most of them died in gas chambers at Auschwitz. Only one adult, twenty-seven year old Lea Feldblum, survived.

One witness recalled how he was on his way down the stairs when his sister shouted to him: “It’s the Germans, save yourself!”

He jumped out the window. “I hid myself in a bush in the garden. I heard the cries of the children that were being kidnapped and I heard the shouts of the Nazis who were carrying them away,” he recalled.

Barbie was convicted in 1987 of crimes against humanity and later died in a French prison.

By: AP and World Israel News Staff