NPR

To Counter Anti-Semitism, French Women Find Strength In Diversity At Auschwitz

With recent incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism in France, a group of women from different religious and ethnic backgrounds sought greater understanding by learning about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Members of a group of French women from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds lay a wreath near the Auschwitz gas chambers earlier this month. After learning more about the horrors of the Holocaust, they hoped to bring greater understanding to their country riven by new acts of anti-Semitism.

France has been shocked by incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism in the last couple weeks, including 80 tombstones in a Jewish cemetery painted with graffiti and swastikas earlier this month.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said France and other Western democracies are experiencing a "resurgence of anti-Semitism unseen since World War II."

One effort to counter the hate brought about 150 French women together from different religious, ethnic and economic backgrounds to go to a notorious symbol of terror and genocide from that war: Auschwitz. Together they wanted to learn more about the Holocaust, in the hopes of bringing a message of greater

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