France anti-Semitic attacks doubled in 2014, Jewish org says

The number of anti-Semitic acts doubled in France during 2014, with acts involving physical violence leading the increase, the country’s main Jewish group said on Tuesday.

Some 851 anti-Semitic acts were registered in 2014, compared with 423 the previous year, with acts of physical violence jumping to 241 from 105, the CRIF said.

The numbers were released as world leaders readied to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and less than three weeks after an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris.

“These anti-Semitic acts represent 51 percent of racist acts committed in France while Jews make up only one percent of the French population,” said the group in a statement.

The Jewish population in France, the biggest in Europe, is thought to number between 500,000 and 600,000.

The CRIF group said there was a “very significant and very worrying increase in the violence of anti-Semitic acts” and warned that “anti-Semitic” prejudices were rife in the country.

French President Francois Hollande will later Tuesday pay tribute to the some 75,000 French Jews deported to Nazi death camps during World War II.