‘Jewish garbage lives here,’ says graffiti in fashionable Paris district

A viciously anti-Semitic message was daubed on a Paris apartment building’s front door.

By: Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

The residents of an apartment building in the fashionable 18th arrondissement of Paris awoke on Thursday morning to find viciously antisemitic slogans daubed on their front door.

“Jewish garbage lives here,” the graffiti on one side of the door declared. On the other side were the words “especially on the third,” accompanied by a Celtic cross — a symbol frequently used by neo-Nazi groups. French media outlets said the words referred specifically to a resident on the building’s third floor. In the last three months, two attempts to set the apartment building’s front door on fire have been reported.

The offensive slogans were spotted by Marie Ottavi, a journalist with the newspaper Libération.

“Here we are in 2018, rue Ordener in Paris and we live a waking nightmare,” Ottavi wrote.

Third floor tenant Julien Barcella, a neighbor of the resident who was targeted, told Le Figaro that both he and his wife had immediately recognized the Nazi associations of the Celtic cross. “Before, we lived in Berlin, so this symbol we know well,” Barcella said.

Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, roundly condemned the anti-Semitic vandalism. “This abject act reminds us that antisemitism still continues, right here, in the very heart of Paris,” Hidalgo said on Twitter. “Let’s all mobilize to fight it.”

The mayor of the 18th arrondissement — which contains the historic Montmartre district of Paris — also denounced “the vile antisemitic messages found this morning.”

“I hope the perpetrators will be quickly arrested and sentenced,” Mayor Eric Lejoindre said.

In a recent interview with The Algemeiner, Francis Kalifat — the head of French Jewish communal body CRIF — addressed the various expressions of anti-Semitism plaguing France, not all of them violent.

“It’s not necessarily related to violence, often it’s more low level — for example mezuzotbeing ripped from the doorposts, hostile looks in the street, graffiti on the walls,” Kalifat said.