Innocence Lost Redux

During 1941-42, the collaborationist Vichy regime in France rounded up 4,500 Jews and gypsies and held them in a concentration camp in Rivesaltes, near Perpignon in the southern part of the country. In an attempt to brighten the days of the children, 400 of whom were later murdered at Auschwitz (along with about half the camp's prisoners), a Swiss nurse at the camp asked them to paint typical Swiss scenes on a wall. According to the Daily Telegraph (registration), the children painted a mural depicting "bucolic scenes from the Swiss countryside, with joyful characters, musical instruments, cows, chalets and pine-covered mountains."

The mural was later abandoned and rediscovered in 1999 underneath a coat of whitewash. A memorial to the prisoners in Rivesaltes is being built and authorities had planned to showcase the children's mural. Those plans will now have to be revised as anti-Semites utterly destroyed the painting using chisels to chip it away from the wall. An art historian discovered the destruction on Friday.

No one has been charged with this crime, as is true for some 80 percent of the 180 anti-Semitic incidents in France so far this year. It is a fact, however, that the perpetrators of many anti-Semitic incidents in France are Muslims from North Africa who remain unassimilated despite years spent in-country and fluency in French. Their hatred for Jews and the West is flamed by radical clerics and racist educational literature, much of it courtesy of Saudi financing.

While it would of course be an exaggeration to claim that things are no better for French Jews now than they were during the war, one can't help but notice the sickness of this particular act. Children whose innocence was violated by racist monsters born in the early twentieth century have been violated again by racist monsters born during the lifetimes of death camp survivors. The Telegraph's article also notes that up to 30,000 French Jews, alarmed at the rising tide of anti-Semitism around them, are considering immigrating to Israel.