Mireille Knoll and the Spirit of Unity

85-Year-old French Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll

For many, days like Easter Sunday help to reinforce the importance of spending time with love ones, while remembering those who are no longer here with us.

As millions of people around the globe gather with family to observe one of the holiest times of the year for both Christians and Jews, the children and grandchildren of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll were cruelly denied the chance to celebrate Passover with their beloved mother and grandmother.

Her partially-burned remains were found on Friday March 23rd after two assailants brutally stabbed her eleven times then attempted to set fire to her body in a frantic effort to cover up the evidence of their heinous and cowardly attack on an elderly woman with Parkinson's Disease who lived alone. 

Because the assailants, one of whom was her neighbor, specifically targeted her because they believed she possessed large amounts of valuables or money in the apartment because she was Jewish, French investigators are calling it a hate crime.

"Hate crime" is probably putting it lightly, but perhaps it best summarizes the wanton criminal violation of someone's person or property based on assumptions or stereotypes about their religion, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

However you wish to define it, the accused attackers who took Mireille Knoll's life two weeks ago displayed a remarkable contempt for human life.

A contempt rooted in the anti-Semitism based on time-worn stereotypes that have dehumanized, marginalized and vilified Jewish people based solely on their faith and customs since before the 1st century AD - when the Roman emperor Hadrian outlawed the Jewish tradition of circumcision because it offended some ancient Romans concept of the natural body.   

Thousands of French citizens turned out to honor
Mireille Knoll and oppose anti-Semitism

The thousands of people who marched in Paris last Wednesday to honor the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor know all too well that the ugly face of anti-Semitism is not an unfamiliar one in France.

In the same sense that Americans still struggle to reconcile with the institutionalized racism that fueled slavery, or the ethnic hatred and xenophobia the led to the forced internment of Japanese-American citizens into American concentration camps during World War II.

The murder of Mireille Knoll serves as a violent reminder that France as a society still faces the ethical challenge and moral responsibility of reconciling the French motto "Liberte´, Equlite´, Fraternite´ " (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) with the fact that some French authorities cooperated with occupying Nazi forces during WWII to deport some 75,000 French Jews to German concentration camps where some 72,500 were eventually killed. 

The fact that Mireille Knoll was able to narrowly escape that fate in the summer of 1942 as a young girl because her mother had Brazilian passport only compounds the sense of outrage that accompanied her brutal death.

The same hatred that led to the death of millions of Jews, Roma and others during WWII at the hands of the Nazis eventually caught up to her inside the small apartment where she lived alone in the 21st century.

As Lelia Dessante, the home-care aide who cooked and cleaned for the Parisian grandmother who lived alone observed to a New York Times reporter:

"She survived the Holocaust in the last century, I think she had a happy life, and yet she was killed at home, frail and defenseless. What world are we living in?"

Steve Bannon and Marine Le Pen at a conference
held by French far-right National Front party 

It's a world in which right-wing political parties which embrace xenophobia and quietly (or openly) tolerate anti-Semitic views have gained footholds in legislatures across Europe.

It's a world in which the current American president refused to condemn a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia where some brandished flags with the swastika and chanted "Jews will not replace us."  

Those kinds of repugnant views aren't just relegated to the sidelines of global politics or in the dark corners of the internet either.

If you recall, back on Saturday March 10th, just about two weeks before Mireille Knoll's murder, former Trump campaign manager and senior White House adviser Steve Bannon was in Paris to address a conference of the French far-right political party National Front.

Bannon famously told the cheering crowd, "Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor."

Now I'm not suggesting that Bannon appearing alongside former right-wing French political candidate Marine Le Pen to encourage white supremacists to embrace being called racists directly led to Mireille Knoll's murder.

But there's little doubt that his championing of racist and xenophobic views as the basis of political policy, and the hatred that led to her death, are inexorably linked.

Some of the thousands of people who marched to honor Mireille Knoll last Wednesday felt so too.

Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, whose anti-immigrant hatred and bigotry helped propel Emmanuel Macron to victory in the French presidential election back in May of 2017, was openly booed by some as she marched in the parade last Wednesday.

Lassana Bathily attends a memorial service for
Mireille Knoll in Paris last Wednesday

Some even chanted "N is for Nazi!" as she walked past in an expression of contempt for the intolerance and anti-immigrant hysteria she cultivates as a tool to boost her political power.

Those kinds of public reactions to her presence echo the overwhelming majority of the country who voted against her in the 2017 French presidential race.

Now obviously there's no changing the brutal circumstances of Mireille Knoll's horrific death.

But there are some positives that have come about as result of it - including a broad and diverse cross-section of French people, including many non-Jews, who came out to honor her memory last and march against anti-Semitism.

As Cnaan Liphshiz reported in an article for the Times of Israel, 27-year-old Lassana Bathily (pictured above), was one of many non-Jews who attended a vigil prayer service at the Tournelles Synagogue in Paris last Wednesday.

Bathily, an African Muslim from Mali, was the employee working inside the stockroom of a kosher store called HyperCacher in France back in January, 2015 when a radicalized Islamist terrorist named Amedy Coulibaly entered the kosher store and murdered four people.

He bravely guided twelve Jewish shoppers who were inside the store to safety and helped them hide inside a refrigerated room until the attack was over.

Mourners place flowers and candles at a makeshift
memorial outside of Mireille Knoll's apartment

The African immigrant was recognized as a national hero for his actions and granted French citizenship.

And as Liphshiz reported, Bathily was warmly received at the ceremony for Mireille Knoll last Wednesday by some of the French Jews in attendance - many of whom crowded around him to shake his hand or hug him to thank him for his actions.

As Liphshiz reported, a Jewish man from Sarcelles, France named David Mechal who attended the vigil on Wednesday, told reporters:

"The Minister is here and Mayor Anne Hidalgo is also here, and that's important because their commitment to the values of the French Republic is imperative for the survival of Jewish life here. But real change us not up to them. It's up to people like Lassana, so it's moving to see him with us here, standing with us in solidarity in our hour of need." 

That kind of spirit of cross-cultural unity is one way to respond to the hatred and anti-Semitism that has reared it's ugly head in France, America and other countries - but it must be accompanied with a justice system that demonstrates a willingness to treat hate crimes as the threat to law and order and personal human rights that they are.

That spirit of unity won't erase the brutal act that took the life of Mireille Knoll in Paris, but it shows that people of different races, ethnicities, religions and nationalities are willing to step forward and stand up for the rights of all - regardless of who the victim is.

Perhaps that's the most meaningful embodiment of the Easter and Passover season.