Hero African Immigrant Tells Mourning French Jews: ‘You Are Not Abandoned’
Image by Getty Images
PARIS (JTA) – Perhaps the most significant attendee at a memorial service for a Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment was a young African Muslim man who unceremoniously entered the synagogue and sat in the back row.
Within minutes, all eyes were on the man — Lassana Bathily, a 27-year-old from Mali whom many consider a hero because he hid a dozen people from the jihadist who killed four Jews at a kosher store in 2015.
After the vigil, dozens of people huddled around Bathily — some to hug him, others only to shake his hand and several to pose for a selfie with him.
Some women crossed over from their section of the synagogue to greet Bathily and thank him for coming, addressing him in the familiar “tu” pronoun rather than the “vous” that they would normally use with strangers.
Several people said his presence offers hope amid growing despair over the proliferation of anti-Semitic violence and the apparent inability by authorities to stop it.
“Real change is … 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,” said David Mechal of Sarcelles.
For Bathily, who has consistently rejected assertions that he was a hero, attending the vigil was “an act of solidarity,” but also a message.
“I want to tell the Jews of France, you are not isolated. You are not abandoned. This is your country,” said Bathily, who himself became a French citizen by power of an executive decree weeks after the bloodbath at the HyperCacher store in recognition of his role in saving people from the perpetrator.
“Do not leave France, stay here,” he added. “There are many like me who support you.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
