Murderer of French Holocaust survivor gets life in prison

Knoll’s killing shook France and put a spotlight on concerns over anti-Semitism in the country, following the murder of another Jewish woman living nearby, Sarah Halimi, a year before, and the attack on a kosher supermarket in 2015, among other incidents.

In the wake of Knoll’s murder, thousands took to the streets of the French capital to march against anti-Semitism.

The French court ruled late Wednesday that her killing was the result of a robbery, motivated by an anti-Semitic prejudice that Knoll was hiding valuables in her apartment.

During the two-week long trial, the two defendants both accused each other of having killed Knoll.

Carrimbacus said Mihoub shouted the Arabic phrase for “God is greatest” while he stabbed Knoll — a claim Mihoub denied.

Knoll and her mother escaped the “Vel d’Hiv” roundup of Parisian Jews in July 1942, according to Meyer Habib, a French lawmaker who said he has been in contact with Knoll’s relatives. During the roundup, approximately 13,000 Jews were arrested and deposited in a stadium near the Eiffel Tower. Knoll escaped to Portugal, likely avoiding being sent to Auschwitz.

In what appeared to be a deviation from prior practices, French authorities quickly characterized her murder as having been motivated by anti-Semitism in 2018.

Knoll was murdered “because she was Jewish,” said President Emmanuel Macron, who attended her funeral.

Some Jewish groups had argued that French authorities have often hesitated or been too slow at naming anti-Semitism as the motive behind attacks on Jews or on Jewish targets.

After the killing of Sarah Halimi in 2017, investigators hesitated to do so, despite numerous details suggesting that an anti-Semitic link existed. A court in April officially established an anti-Semitic motive, even though it said that her suspected killer cannot be prosecuted because he was in a cannabis-induced state of mental delirium at the time of the attack. The lack of a conviction sparked outrage among French Jewish community and drew criticism from Macron.

“Deciding to take narcotics and then ‘going mad’ should, not in my view, remove your criminal responsibility,” Macron told the right-leaning daily Le Figaro.

His assurances to the country’s Jewish community came as European officials warned that the coronavirus pandemic could give rise to a wave of anti-Semitic hate crimes on the continent. Earlier this month, the European Agency for Fundamental Rights said “existing antisemitic discourse has been revived” by the pandemic, “and new antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories” have emerged.