Lyon’s chief rabbi receives threatening letter, Holocaust photos

A letter threatening to “punish Jews,” accompanied by photos of Jewish children being led to death camps during the Holocaust, was sent to Lyon’s chief rabbi Richard Wertenschlag.

According to a Wednesday AFP report, the letter was received at the Grande Synagogue de Lyon on August 10 and said that “more and more frequently we are having ideas imposed on us that have as their goal to apologize for the Jew, the so-called Shoah (Holocaust), the evil Palestinians. From now on we will punish a Jew … each time that you go on television to complain.”

The letter also said that the photographs “prove that the Jews were well treated in Germany, fed and lodged, with summer camp for the children.”

According to Capital magazine, the letter was signed by a group calling itself “The Network of The Just.”

French anti-terrorist authorities were notified of the incident. So far the identity of the sender is unknown.

Wertenschlag said that anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist correspondence was “not unusual,” but that this was the first threatening letter he has received.

In March, a rabbi, his two children, and an 8-year-old girl were killed outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, by Algerian-French terrorist Mohammed Merah.

In early June, three Jewish men were assaulted by what police believe to have been a group of North African men in Villeurbanne, part of the Lyon metropolitan area.