Should Paris Building Remove Mystery Swastikas From Tile Floor?
A French anti-Semitism watchdog urged the mayor of Paris to order the removal of a mosaic floor featuring swastikas that the group identified in a residential building.
The floor of the entrance of the building in Paris’ six arrondissement, an affluent and central quarter comprising the touristic Saint-Germain-des-Pres area, contains dozens of swastikas made of black mosaic and incorporated at regular intervals into the floor’s pattern, the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, wrote Thursday in a statement.
“BNVCA does not understand how these illegal symbols have been allowed to exist, probably for a very long time, in this building without being flagged by a single person,” the statement by BNVCA read. “BNVCA deplores how the residents of this building seemed to accommodate these symbols when their presence is intolerable.”
BNVCA, which photographed the lobby floor, asked Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to “intervene with the owners or other legally responsible parties” to remove the tiles.
Unless the symbols are removed, “BNVCA will file a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office,” BNVCA said, noting that displaying Nazi symbols is illegal in France.
BNVCA founder Sammy Ghozlan said his organization was still working to find out who had the swastikas incorporated into the mosaic floor of the building on 12 rue du Regard.
He noted the building is located 200 yards from Hotel Lutetia, which during the Nazi occupation was requisitioned by the German counter-espionage service and served as the luxury quarters of officers including Alfred Toepfer and the French collaborator Rudy de Mérode.
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
