Source: The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1280535,00.html
On August 11, 2004 The Guardian reported, "President Jacques Chirac led politicians and religious leaders in a now familiar chorus of revulsion yesterday at the latest desecration of a Jewish cemetery to unsettle France. Vandals smashed gravestones and scrawled swastikas, Celtic crosses and Adolf Hitler's name (misspelt) in black paint on 56 tombs in the graveyard in Lyon on Monday evening. A war memorial honouring Jewish members of the French resistance who died during the second world war was also covered in graffiti. It was the 11th similar attack on French cemeteries - Jewish, Muslim and Christian - since April. Victims' groups yesterday stressed that the government needed to translate its well-meaning expressions of disgust into action to punish the perpetrators. Despite the intense national sensitivity to acts of race hatred, police have failed to identify those responsible for the spate of assaults which have seen more than 300 tombs defaced. It remains unclear whether coordinated neo-Nazi groups or lone vandals are to blame... [Richard Wertenschlag, Lyon's chief rabbi] raised the possibility that this was a copycat assault, part of a 'snowballing phenomenon' inspired by the media attention on previous desecrations. 'One has to question whether we are right to give these sacrilegious acts such a degree of publicity,' he said... While much of the recent rise in acts of racial hatred in France is attributed to tensions between the nation's large Muslim and Jewish communities, the repeated appearance of swastikas suggest that the cemetery attacks were committed by neo-Nazis. Police in Alsace were yesterday said to be concerned at a rise in the number of clandestine neo-Nazi conferences held in the region, with venues hired out months in advance under false pretexts."