Swastikas tagged at former Nazi transit camp near Paris

Two swastikas have been found spray-painted on buildings in a Paris suburb that served as a World War II transit camp for some 63,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Drancy internment camp served as the main departure point for Jewish deportees from France to Nazi death camps between August 1941 and August 1944.

The two swastikas were drawn in two different buildings. One measured a few centimeters across, while the other was nearly one meter (3.2 feet) in diameter.

A candidate in the upcoming municipal elections spotted the swastikas Wednesday while campaigning, before notifying memorial associations, he tells AFP.

“In this neighborhood more than any other, which was once a transit camp for Holocaust victims before they were deported to death camps by the Nazis, these acts are extremely serious,” Gokhan Unver, a mayoral candidate for the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), says.

Three local lawmakers had filed a report with judicial authorities, he adds.

A memorial near the housing estate where the swastikas were spray-painted, was vandalized in March 2024.

France is home to western Europe’s largest Jewish population, at around half a million people, as well as a significant Muslim community sensitive to the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Members of France’s Jewish community have said the number of antisemitic acts has surged following the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023 which triggered Israel’s military response.

The interior ministry recorded 886 antisemitic acts between January 1 and August 31, 2025, 20-percent down on the same period in 2024.