Two swastikas have been discovered in the Cité de la Muette in Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), the former internment camp from which nearly 63,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1941 and 1944.
The graffiti, observed Thursday by an AFP journalist, were found in two separate building entrances: one small marking at ground level and another, approximately one meter in diameter, on the fifth and top floor of a deteriorating building currently undergoing renovation.
Residents expressed shock. “It’s very disturbing,” said Moussa Cissokho, who lives in the building and said he does not understand “what they have against Jews.” He believes the graffiti are recent and said he cannot imagine any of his neighbors being responsible.
Gokhan Unver, a candidate from the LFI-PCF list in the Drancy municipal elections, stated that he alerted the housing authority and memorial associations after discovering the vandalism during a door-to-door campaign. He described the act as being of “absolute gravity” in a neighborhood marked by its history as a transit camp for victims of the Holocaust before their deportation to Nazi concentration camps.
Three Communist city council members have referred the matter to the courts, and memorial associations are expected to join the complaint.
The Friends of the Foundation for the Memory of Deportation expressed their “disgust” and “strongly condemned this indefensible act,” urging authorities to identify and punish those responsible.
In March 2024, the Drancy Shoah Memorial had already been vandalized.
