Two Men Tried for Murder of Jewish Woman in France

A banner in Rome commemorates the life of Mireille Knoll, stating, “In memory of Mireille Knoll, victim of Antisemitic Hate.” (Wikimedia)

French courts began to try two men on October 26 concerning the 2018 murder of a Holocaust survivor. The body of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old grandmother, was found by firefighters in her burning Paris apartment with eleven stab wounds. 

The two alleged killers, Yacine Mihoub and Alex Carrimbacus, met in prison after earlier convictions of theft and violence. According to Carrimbacus’ testimony, Mihoub, the son of one of Knoll’s neighbors, allegedly accused Knoll of calling the police on him before killing her while shouting, “Allahu akbar.” Carrimbaus argued that Mihoub wanted his help to rob Knoll in a so-called “money scheme” and had spoken “about Jews’ money, their wealth.” For this reason, prosecutors are treating the murder as a hate crime; however, judges have yet to decide whether it will be tried as such.

Mihoub opposed Carrimbacus, stating the latter was the one to rob Knoll and later murder her. 

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke after attending Knoll’s funeral, stating that the two men on trial had “murdered an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish and in doing so had sullied our most sacred values and our memory." 

Violent antisemitism in France has been steadily on the rise over the past decade. Knoll’s murder came shortly after the 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Holocaust survivor who was beaten and thrown from her window. The French Court of Cassation—the state’s highest court—found that the killer, Kobili Traore, could not face trial because he was “in a state of acute mental delirium brought on by his consumption of cannabis.” Prior examples include Amedy Coulibaly killing Jewish customers at a Kosher supermarket in 2015 and Mohammed Merah fatally shooting three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012. 

According to a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a leading global Jewish advocacy group, 67 percent of Jewish respondents and 47 percent of non-Jewish respondents identified antisemitism as a serious problem in France. Moreover, 37 percent of Jewish respondents reported abstaining from wearing clothing or items that might reveal their religious affiliation, 43 percent reported avoiding certain locations, and a staggering 52 percent reported considering emigrating. 

In light of rising antisemitism in France, French Jews have found themselves divided in their support for Eric Zemmour, a right-wing pundit for the French ‘CNews’ and “noncandidate” in the French presidential election who polled at 15 percent in late October. In September, Zemmour, himself a Jew of Algerian heritage, faced criticism for calling the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus into question and downplaying the acts of the collaborationist wartime regime of Marshal Philippe Petain. Contrary to Zemmour’s claims, the Petain regime actively collaborated with the Third Reich, rounding up more than 70,000 Jews and sending them to their deaths. 

The murder of Knoll has caused much consternation within the Jewish community, forcing many Jews to question their safety in the face of rising antisemitism on display in France.