We had to wait forty years. On August 9, a national tribute was paid for the first time to the victims of the attack on rue des Rosiers, which left six dead and twenty-two injured on August 9, 1982.
That day, at 13:15 p.m., two groups of armed men who arrived separately stormed in front of the Ashkenazi Jo Goldenberg restaurant. Immediately, they targeted the customers and staff of this famous establishment in the Jewish district of Marais, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The terrorists, who first attacked with grenades, then with machine guns, are alleged members of the Fatah-Revolutionary Council (Fatah-CR), a small radical Palestinian dissident group, at the time based in Iraq and led by the terrorist Abu Nidal.
The establishment filed for bankruptcy in 2006 then, after a brief reopening followed by a painful decline, closed its doors again in 2010. Its emblematic boss, Jo Goldenberg, died at the age of 91, in 2014. True neighborhood institution, the address has been replaced by a ready-to-wear store. At one point, the plaque commemorating the attack had even disappeared.
Four decades later, at the intersection of rue des Rosiers and rue Ferdinand-Duval, a ceremony was held commemorating the most serious anti-Semitic attack in France since the Second World War, which took place two years after the attack against the synagogue on rue Copernic (16th arrondissement of Paris). Were present: the ambassadors of Israel, the United States and Norway, a deputy of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, a representative of the mayor of Paris-Centre, Ariel Weil, the deputy of Paris Clara Chassaniol (Renaissance) , the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) Yonathan Arfi.
“The Keeper of the Seals, Éric Dupond-Moretti, spoke last to assure the victims and their loved ones of the solidarity of the State,” reports Le Monde. The Minister of Justice insisted on France's commitment to combating anti-Semitism. “Forty years later, a sad observation emerges: anti-Semitism, this filthy beast, is not dead; she crawls, more or less masked. »
In its August 10 edition, Le Monde also wrote: “Before the Minister of Justice, two victims of the attack spoke out. Obviously very moved and tired, Jacqueline Niego, 83, who lost her older brother, André, in the attack, was unable to finish reading the text she had prepared. She had time to recall that he had escaped Nazi barbarity by hiding with his sister. Then she insisted: “For us, the families, the same questions have remained for forty years. Why this anti-Semitic act? Who are the real sponsors? How could they [the terrorists] cross our borders so easily? So many questions without real answers. » She welcomed the extradition, by Norway, of a suspect, in December 2020. » He is the only one in pre-trial detention in France, to date.
Text: Katia Barillot
03.09.22
